UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


THE  LAW  OF 
HUMAN  PROGRESS 


THE    LAW    OF 
HUMAN    PROGRESS 


BY 

HENRY  GEORGE 

AUTHOR  OF  "PROGRESS  AND  POVERTY' 


JOSEPH    FELS 
INTERNATIONAL      COMMISSION 

122    EAST     37th     STREET 
NEW    YORK,    U.    S.    A. 


COPYHIOIHT,  1879,  1907.  1917 

BY 

HENRY   GEORGE 


vw 

10  I 


The  Law  of  Human  Progress 


What  in  me  is  dark 

niumine,  what  is  low  raise  and  support; 
That  to  the  height  of  this  great  argument 
I  may  assert  eternal  Providence 
And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men. 


— Milton. 


186610 


The  Law  of  Human  Progress 

I.    WHAT  is  THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS? 

IF  the  conclusions  with  which  I  have  challenged 
the    current    political    economy    are    correct, 
they  will  fall  under  a  larger  generalization. 
What  is  the  law  of  human  progress? 
This  is  a  question  which  involves,  directly  or  in- 
directly, some  of  the  very  highest  problems  with 
which  the  human  mind  can  engage.     But  it  is  a 
question  which  naturally  comes  up.    Are  or  are  not 
the  conclusions  to  which  we  have  come  consistent 
with  the  great  law  under  which  human  development 
goes  on? 

What  is  that  law?  We  must  find  the  answer  to 
our  question;  for  the  current  philosophy,  though  it 
clearly  recognizes  the  existence  of  such  a  law,  gives 
no  more  satisfactory  account  of  it  than  the  current 
political  economy  does  of  the  persistence  of  want 
amid  advancing  wealth. 

[3] 


THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Let  us,  as  far  as  possible,  keep  to  the  firm  ground  of 
facts.  Whether  man  was  or  was  not  gradually  devel- 
oped from  an  animal,  it  is  not  necessary  to  inquire. 
However  intimate  may  be  the  connection  between 
questions  which  relate  to  man  as  we  know  him  and 
questions  which  relate  to  his  genesis,  it  is  only  from 
the  former  upon  the  latter  that  light  can  be  thrown. 
Inference  cannot  proceed  from  the  unknown  to  the 
known.  It  is  only  from  facts  of  which  we  are  cogni- 
zant that  we  can  infer  what  has  preceded  cognizance. 

However  man  may  have  originated,  all  we  know  of 
him  is  as  man — just  as  he  is  now  to  be  found.  There 
is  no  record  or  trace  of  him  in  any  lower  condition 
than  that  in  which  savages  are  still  to  be  met.  By 
whatever  bridge  he  may  have  crossed  the  wide 
|  chasm  which  now  separates  him  from  the  brutes, 
there  remain  of  it  no  vestiges.  Between  the  lowest 
savages  of  whom  we  know  and  the  highest  animals, 
there  is  an  irreconcilable  difference — a  difference  not 
merely  of  degree,  but  of  kind.  Many  of  the  charac- 
teristics, actions,  and  emotions  of  man  are  exhibited 
by  the  lower  animals;  but  man,  no  matter  how  low 
in  the  scale  of  humanity,  has  never  yet  been  found 
destitute  of  one  thing  of  which  no  animal  shows  the 
slightest  trace,  a  clearly  recognizable  but  almost 
[4] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

undefinable  something,  which  gives  him  the  power 
of  improvement — which  makes  him  the  progressive 
animal,^ 

The  beaver  builds  a  dam,  and  the  bird  a  nest,  and 
the  bee  a  cell;  but  while  beavers'  dams,  and  birds' 
nests,  and  bees'  cells  are  always  constructed  on  the 
same  model,  the  house  of  the  man  passes  from  the 
rude  hut  of  leaves  and  branches  to  the  magnificent 
mansion  replete  with  modern  conveniences.  The 
dog  can  to  a  certain  extent  connect  cause  and  effect, 
and  may  be  taught  some  tricks;  but  his  capacity  in 
these  respects  has  not  been  a  whit  increased  during 
all  the  ages  he  has  been  the  associate  of  improving 
man,  and  the  dog  of  civilization  is  not  a  whit  more 
accomplished  or  intelligent  than  the  dog  of  the 
wandering  savage.  We  know  of  no  animal  that  uses 
clothes,  that  cooks  its  food,  that  makes  itself  tools  or 
weapons,  that  breeds  other  animals  that  it  wishes  to 
eat,  or  that  has  an  articulate  language.  But  men 
who  do  not  do  such  things  have  never  yet  been 
found,  or  heard  of,  except  in  fable.  That  is  to  say, 
man,  wherever  we  know  him,  exhibits  this  power — 
of  supplementing  what  nature  has  done  for  him  by 
what  he  does  for  himself;  and,  in  fact,  so  inferior  is 
the  physical  endowment  of  man,  that  there  is  no  part 
[5] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

of  the  world,  save  perhaps  some  of  the  small  islands 
of  the  Pacific,  where  without  this  faculty  he  could 
maintain  an  existence. 

Man  everywhere  and  at  all  times  exhibits  this 
faculty — everywhere  and  at  all  times  of  which  we 
have  knowledge  he  has  made  some  use  of  it.  But 
the  degree  in  which  this  has  been  done  greatly  varies. 
Between  the  rude  canoe  and  the  steamship;  between 
the  boomerang  and  the  repeating  rifle;  between  the 
roughly  carved  wooden  idol  and  the  breathing  mar- 
ble of  Grecian  art;  between  savage  knowledge  and 
modern  science;  between  the  wild  Indian  and  the 
white  settler;  between  the  Hottentot  woman  and 
the  belle  of  polished  society,  there  is  an  enormous 
difference. 

The  varying  degrees  in  which  this  faculty  is  used 
cannot  be  ascribed  to  differences  in  original  capacity 
— the  most  highly  improved  peoples  of  the  present 
day  were  savages  within  historic  times,  and  we  meet 
with  the  widest  differences  between  peoples  of  the 
same  stock.  Nor  can  they  be  wholly  ascribed  to 
differences  in  physical  environment — the  cradles  of 
learning  and  the  arts  are  now  in  many  cases  tenanted 
by  barbarians,  and  within  a  few  years  great  cities 
rise  on  the  hunting  grounds  of  wild  tribes.  All  these 
[6] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

differences  are  evidently  connected  with  social 
development.  Beyond  perhaps  the  veriest  rudi- 
ments, it  becomes  possible  for  man  to  improve  only 
as  he  lives  with  his  fellows.  All  these  improvements, 
therefore,  in  man's  powers  and  condition  we  sum- 
marize in  the  term  civilization.  Men  improve  as 
they  become  civilized,  or  learn  to  co-operate  in 
society. 

What  is  the  law  of  this  improvement?  By  what 
common  principle  can  we  explain  the  different  stages 
of  civilization  at  which  different  communities  have 
arrived?  In  what  consists  essentially  the  progress 
of  civilization,  so  that  we  may  say  of  varying  social 
adjustments,  this  favors  it,  and  that  does  not;  or 
explain  why  an  institution  or  condition  which  may 
at  one  time  advance  it  may  at  another  time  retard  it? 

The  prevailing  belief  now  is,  that  the  progress  of 
civilization  is  a  development  or  evolution,  hi  the 
course  of  which  man's  powers  are  increased  and  his 
qualities  improved  by  the  operation  of  causes 
similar  to  those  which  are  relied  upon  as  explaining 
the  genesis  of  species — viz.,  the  survival  of  the  fittest 
and  the  hereditary  transmission  of  acquired  qualities. 

That  civilization  is  an  evolution — that  it  is,  in  the 
language  of  Herbert  Spencer,  a  progress  from  an 
[7J 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity — there  is  no  doubt;  but  to 
say  this  is  not  to  explain  or  identify  the  causes  which 
forward  or  retard  it.  How  far  the  sweeping  generali- 
zations of  Spencer,  which  seek  to  account  for  all 
phenomena  under  terms  of  matter  and  force,  may, 
properly  understood,  include  all  these  causes,  I  am 
unable  to  say;  but,  as  scientifically  expounded,  the 
development  philosophy  has  either  not  yet  definitely 
met  this  question,  or  has  given  birth,  or  rather  co- 
herency, to  an  opinion  which  does  not  accord  with  the 
facts. 

The  vulgar  explanation  of  progress  is,  I  think,  very 
much  like  the  view  naturally  taken  by  the  money 
maker  of  the  causes  of  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth.  His  theory,  if  he  has  one,  usually  is,  that 
there  is  plenty  of  money  to  be  made  by  those  who 
have  will  and  ability,  and  that  it  is  ignorance,  or  idle- 
ness, or  extravagance,  that  makes  the  difference  be- 
tween the  rich  and  the  poor.  And  so  the  common 
explanation  of  differences  of  civilization  is  of  differ- 
ences in  capacity.  The  civilized  races  are  the 
superior  races,  and  advance  in  civilization  is  accord- 
ing to  this  superiority — just  as  English  victories 
were,  in  common  English  opinion,  due  to  the  natural 
[8] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

superiority  of  Englishmen  to  frog-eating  Frenchmen; 
and  popular  government,  active  invention,  and 
greater  average  comfort  are,  or  were  until  lately,  in 
common  American  opinion,  due  to  the  greater 
"smartness  of  the  Yankee  Nation." 

Now,  just  as  the  politico-economic  doctrines  which 
I  have  met  and  disproved,  harmonize  with  the  com- 
mon opinion  of  men  who  see  capitalists  paying  wages 
and  competition  reducing  wages;  just  as  the  Malthu- 
sian  theory  harmonized  with  existing  prejudices  both 
of  the  rich  and  the  poor;  so  does  the  explanation  of 
progress  as  a  gradual  race  improvement  harmonize 
with  the  vulgar  opinion  which  accounts  by  race  dif- 
ferences for  differences  hi  civilization.  It  has  given 
coherence  and  a  scientific  formula  to  opinions  which 
already  prevailed.  Its  wonderful  spread  since  the 
time  Darwin  first  startled  the  world  with  his  "Origin 
of  Species"  has  not  been  so  much  a  conquest  as  an 
assimilation. 

The  view  which  now  dominates  the  world  of 
thought  is  this:  That  the  struggle  for  existence, 
just  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  intense,  impels  men 
to  new  efforts  and  inventions.  That  this  improve- 
ment and  capacity  for  improvement  is  fixed  by 
hereditary  transmission,  and  extended  by  the  ten- 
[9] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

dency  of  the  best  adapted  individual,  or  most  im- 
proved individual,  to  survive  and  propagate  among 
individuals,  and  of  the  best  adapted,  or  most  im- 
proved tribe,  nation,  or  race  to  survive  in  the  strug- 
gle between  social  aggregates.  On  this  theory  the 
differences  between  man  and  the  animals,  and  differ- 
ences in  the  relative  progress  of  men,  are  now  ex- 
plained as  confidently,  and  all  but  as  generally,  as  a 
little  while  ago  they  were  explained  upon  the  theory 
of  special  creation  and  divine  interposition. 

The  practical  outcome  of  this  theory  is  in  a  sort  of 
hopeful  fatalism,  of  which  current  literature  is  full.* 
In  this  view,  progress  is  the  result  of  forces  which 
work  slowly,  steadily  and  remorselessly,  for  the 
elevation  of  man.  War,  slavery,  tyranny,  super- 
stition, famine,  and  pestilence,  the  want  and 
misery  which  fester  in  modern  civilization,  are  the 
impelling  causes  which  drive  man  on,  by  eliminating 

*  In  semi-scientific  or  popularized  form  this  may  perhaps  be  seen  in  best, 
because  frankest,  expression  in  "The  Martyrdom  of  Man,"  by  Winwood 
Reade,  a  writer  of  singular  vividness  and  power.  This  book  is  in  reality  a 
history  of  progress,  or,  rather,  a  monograph  upon  its  causes  and  methods, 
and  will  well  repay  perusal  for  its  vivid  pictures,  whatever  may  be  thought 
of  the  capacity  of  the  author  for  philosophic  generalization.  The  connec- 
tion between  subject  and  title  may  be  seen  by  the  conclusion:  "I  give  to 
universal  history  a  strange  but  true  title — The  Martyrdom  of  Man.  In 
each  generation  the  human  race  has  been  tortured  that  their  children 
might  profit  by  their  woes.  Our  own  prosperity  is  founded  on  the  agonies 
of  the  past.  Is  it  therefore  unjust  that  we  also  should  suffer  for  the  benefit 
of  those  who  are  to  come?" 

[101 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

poorer  types  and  extending  the  higher;  and  heredi- 
tary transmission  is  the  power  by  which  advances 
are  fixed,  and  past  advances  made  the  footing  for 
new  advances.  The  individual  is  the  result  of 
changes  thus  impressed  upon  and  perpetuated 
through  a  long  series  of  past  individuals,  and  the 
social  organization  takes  its  form  from  the  individuals 
of  which  it  is  composed.  Thus,  while  this  theory  is, 
as  Herbert  Spencer  says* — "radical  to  a  degree  be- 
yond anything  which  current  radicalism  conceives;" 
inasmuch  as  it  looks  for  changes  in  the  very  nature 
of  man;  it  is  at  the  same  time  "conservative  to  a 
degree  beyond  anything  conceived  by  current  con- 
servatism," inasmuch  as  it  holds  tnat  no  change  can 
avail  save  these  slow  changes  in  men's  natures. 
Philosophers  may  teach  that  this  does  not  lessen  the 
duty  of  endeavoring  to  reform  abuses,  just  as  the 
theologians  who  taught  predestinarianism  insisted 
on  the  duty  of  all  to  struggle  for  salvation;  but,  as 
generally  apprehended,  the  result  is  fatalism — "do 
what  we  may,  the  mills  of  the  gods  grind /on  regard- 
less either  of  our  aid  or  our  hindrance."^!  allude  to 
this  only  to  illustrate  what  I  take  to  be  the  opinion 
now  rapidly  spreading  and  permeating  common 

*  "The  Study  of  Sociology" — Conclusion. 
[11] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

thought;  not  that  in  the  search  for  truth  any  regard 
for  its  effects  should  be  permitted  to  bias  the  mind. 
But  this  I  take  to  be  the  current  view  of  civilization: 
That  it  is  the  result  of  forces,  operating  in  the  way 
indicated,  which  slowly  change  the  character,  and 
improve  and  elevate  the  powers  of  man;  that  the 
difference  between  civilized  man  and  savage  is  of  a 
long  race  education,  which  has  become  permanently 
fixed  in  mental  organization;  and  that  this  improve- 
ment tends  to  go  on  increasingly,  to  a  higher  and 
higher  civilization.  We  have  reached  such  a  point 
that  progress  seems  to  be  natural  with  us,  and  we 
look  forward  confidently  to  the  greater  achievements 
of  the  coming  race — some  even  holding  that  the 
progress  of  science  will  finally  give  men  immortality 
and  enable  them  to  make  bodily  the  tour  not  only  of 
the  planets,  but  of  the  fixed  stars,  and  at  length  to 
manufacture  suns  and  systems  for  themselves.* 

But  without  soaring  to  the  stars,  the  moment  that 
this  theory  of  progression,  which  seems  so  natural 
to  us  amid  an  advancing  civilization,  looks  around 
the  world,  it  comes  against  an  enormous  fact — the 
fixed,  petrified  civilizations.  The  majority  of  the 
human  race  to-day  have  no  idea  of  progress;  the 

•Winwood  Reade,  "The  Martyrdom  of  Man." 

[12] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

majority  of  the  human  race  to-day  look  (as  until  a 
few  generations  ago  our  own  ancestors  looked)  upon 
the  past  as  the  time  of  human  perfection.  The  dif- 
ference between  the  savage  and  the  civilized  man 
may  be  explained  on  the  theory  that  the  former  is  as 
yet  so  imperfectly  developed  that  his  progress  is 
hardly  apparent;  but  how,  upon  the  theory  that 
human  progress  is  the  result  of  general  and  continu- 
ous causes,  shall  we  account  for  the  civilizations  that 
have  progressed  so  far  and  then  stopped?  It  cannot 
be  said  of  the  Hindoo  and  of  the  Chinaman,  as  it 
may  be  said  of  the  savage,  that  our  superiority  is  the 
result  of  a  longer  education;  that  we  are,  as  it  were, 
the  grown  men  of  nature,  while  they  are  the  children. 
The  Hindoos  and  the  Chinese  were  civilized  when 
we  were  savages.  They  had  great  cities,  highly  or- 
ganized and  powerful  governments,  literatures, 
philosophies,  polished  manners,  considerable  division 
of  labor,  large  commerce,  and  elaborate  arts,  when 
our  ancestors  were  wandering  barbarians,  living  in 
huts  and  skin  tents,  not  a  whit  further  advanced 
than  the  American  Indians.  While  we  have  pro- 
gressed from  this  savage  state  to  Nineteenth  Century 
civilization,  they  have  stood  still.  If  progress  be  the 
result  of  fixed  laws,  inevitable  and  eternal,  which 
[13] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

impel  men  forward,  how  shall  we  account  for 
this? 

One  of  the  best  popular  expounders  of  the  develop- 
ment philosophy,  Walter  Bagehot  ("Physics  and 
Politics"),  admits  the  force  of  this  objection,  and 
endeavors  in  this  way  to  explain  it:  That  the  first 
thing  necessary  to  civilize  man  is  to  tame  him;  to 
induce  him  to  live  in  association  with  his  fellows  in 
subordination  to  law;  and  hence  a  body  or  "cake" 
of  laws  and  customs  grows  up,  being  intensified  and 
extended  by  natural  selection,  the  tribe  or  nation 
thus  bound  together  having  an  advantage  over  those 
who  are  not.  That  this  cake  of  custom  and  law 
finally  becomes  too  thick  and  hard  to  permit  further 
progress,  which  can  go  on  only  as  circumstances 
occur  which  introduce  discussion,  and  thus  permit 
the  freedom  and  mobility  necessary  to  improvement. 

This  explanation,  which  Mr.  Bagehot  offers,  as  he 
says,  with  some  misgivings,  is,  I  think,  at  the  expense 
of  the  general  theory.  But  it  is  not  worth  while 
speaking  of  that,  for  it,  manifestly,  does  not  explain 
the  facts. 

The  hardening  tendency  of  which  Mr.  Bagehot 
speaks  would  show  itself  at  a  very  early  period  of 
development,  and  his  illustrations  of  it  are  nearly 
\  141 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

all  drawn  from  savage  or  semi-savage  life.  Whereas, 
these  arrested  civilizations  had  gone  a  long  distance 
before  they  stopped.  There  must  have  been  a  time 
when  they  were  very  far  advanced  as  compared  with 
the  savage  state,  and  were  yet  plastic,  free,  and  ad- 
vancing. These  arrested  civilizations  stopped  at  a 
point  which  was  hardly  in  anything  inferior  and  in 
many  respects  superior  to  European  civilization  of, 
say,  the  sixteenth  or  at  any  rate  the  fifteenth  century. 
Up  to  that  point  then  there  must  have  been  discus- 
sion, the  hailing  of  what  was  new,  and  mental 
activity  of  all  sorts.  They  had  architects  who  carried 
the  art  of  building,  necessarily  by  a  series  of  innova- 
tions or  improvements,  up  to  a  very  high  point; 
ship-builders  who  in  the  same  way,  by  innovation 
after  innovation,  finally  produced  as  good  a  vessel 
as  the  war  ships  of  Henry  VIII.;  inventors  who 
stopped  only  on  the  verge  of  our  most  important 
improvements,  and  from  some  of  whom  we  can  yet 
learn;  engineers  who  constructed  great  irrigation 
works  and  navigable  canals;  rival  schools  of  philoso- 
phy and  conflicting  ideas  of  religion.  One  great 
religion,  in  many  respects  resembling  Christianity, 
rose  in  India,  displaced  the  old  religion,  passed  into 
China,  sweeping  over  that  country,  and  was  dis- 
[15] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

placed  again  in  its  old  seats,  just  as  Christianity  was 
displaced  in  its  first  seats.  There  was  life,  and  active 
life,  and  the  innovation  that  begets  improvement, 
long  after  men  had  learned  to  live  together.  And, 
moreover,  both  India  and  China  have  received  the 
infusion  of  new  life  in  conquering  races,  with  different 
customs  and  modes  of  thought. 

The  most  fixed  and  petrified  of  all  civilizations  of 
which  we  know  anything  was  that  of  Egypt,  where 
even  art  finally  assumed  a  conventional  and  inflexible 
form.  But  we  know  that  behind  this  must  have  been 
a  time  of  life  and  vigor — a  freshly  developing  and  ex- 
panding civilization,  such  as  ours  is  now — or  the  arts 
and  sciences  could  never  have  been  carried  to  such  a 
pitch.  And  recent  excavations  have  brought  to 
light  from  beneath  what  we  before  knew  of  Egypt  an 
earlier  Egypt  still — in  statues  and  carvings  which, 
instead  of  a  hard  and  formal  type,  beam  with  life  and 
expression,  which  show  art  struggling,  ardent,  natu- 
ral, and  free,  the  sure  indication  of  an  active  and  ex- 
panding life.  So  it  must  have  been  once  with  all  now 
unprogressive  civilizations. 

But  it  is  not  merely  these  arrested  civilizations 
that  the  current  theory  of  development  fails  to 
account  for.  It  is  not  merely  that  men  have  gone 
[16] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

so  far  on  the  path  of  progress  and  then  stopped;  it 
is  that  men  have  gone  far  on  the  path  of  progress  and 
then  gone  back.  It  is  not  merely  an  isolated  case  that 
thus  confronts  the  theory — it  is  the  universal  rule. 
Every  civilization  that  the  world  has  yet  seen  has 
had  its  period  of  vigorous  growth,  of  arrest  and  stag- 
nation; its  decline  and  fall.  Of  all  the  civilizations 
that  have  arisen  and  flourished,  there  remain  to-day 
but  those  that  have  been  arrested,  and  our  own, 
which  is  not  yet  as  old  as  were  the  pyramids  when 
Abraham  looked  upon  them — while  behind  the 
pyramids  were  twenty  centuries  of  recorded  history. 

That  our  own  civilization  has  a  broader  base,  is 
of  a  more  advanced  type,  moves  quicker  and  soars 
higher  than  any  preceding  civilization  is  undoubt- 
edly true;  but  in  these  respects  it  is  hardly  more  in 
advance  of  the  Greco-Roman  civilization  than  that 
was  in  advance  of  Asiatic  civilization;  and  if  it  were, 
that  would  prove  nothing  as  to  its  permanence  and 
future  advance,  unless  it  be  shown  that  it  is  superior 
in  those  things  which  caused  the  ultimate  failure  of 
its  predecessors.  The  current  theory  does  not  assume 
this. 

In  truth,  nothing  could  be  further  from  explain- 
ing the  facts  of  universal  history  than  this  theory 
[17] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

that  civilization  is  the  result  of  a  course  of  natural 
selection  which  operates  to  improve  and  elevate  the 
powers  of  man.  That  civilization  has  arisen  at  dif- 
ferent times  in  different  places  and  has  progressed  at 
different  rates,  is  not  inconsistent  with  this  theory; 
for  that  might  result  from  the  unequal  balancing  of 
impelling  and  resisting  forces;  but  that  progress 
everywhere  commencing,  for  even  among  the  lowest 
tribes  it  is  held  that  there  has  been  some  progress, 
has  nowhere  been  continuous,  but  has  everywhere 
been  brought  to  a  stand  or  retrogression,  is  abso- 
lutely inconsistent.  For  if  progress  operated  to  fix 
an  improvement  in  man's  nature  and  thus  to  pro- 
duce further  progress,  though  there  might  be  occa- 
sional interruption,  yet  the  general  rule  would  be  that 
progress  would  be  continuous — that  advance  would 
lead  to  advance,  and  civilization  develop  into  higher 
civilization. 

Not  merely  the  general  rule,  but  the  universal  rule, 
is  the  reverse  of  this.  The  earth  is  the  tomb  of  the 
dead  empires,  no  less  than  of  dead  men.  Instead  of 
progress  fitting  men  for  greater  progress,  every 
civilization  that  was  in  its  own  time  as  vigorous  and 
advancing  as  ours  is  now,  has  of  itself  come  to  a  stop. 
Over  and  over  again,  art  has  declined,  learning  sunk, 
[18] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

power  waned,  population  become  sparse,  until  the 
people  who  had  built  great  temples  and  mighty 
cities,  turned  rivers  and  pierced  mountains,  culti- 
vated the  earth  like  a  garden  and  introduced  the 
utmost  refinement  into  the  minute  affairs  of  life, 
remained  but  in  a  remnant  of  squalid  barbarians,  who 
had  lost  even  the  memory  of  what  their  ancestors 
had  done,  and  regarded  the  surviving  fragments  of 
their  grandeur  as  the  work  of  genii,  or  of  the  mighty 
race  before  the  flood.  So  true  is  this,  that  when  we 
think  of  the  past,  it  seems  like  the  inexorable  law, 
from  which  we  can  no  more  hope  to  be  exempt  than 
the  young  man  who  "feels  his  life  hi  every  limb"  can 
hope  to  be  exempt  from  the  dissolution  which  is  the 
common  fate  of  all.  "Even  this,  O  Rome,  must  one 
day  be  thy  fate!"  wept  Scipio  over  the  ruins  of  Car- 
thage, and  Macaulay's  picture  of  the  New  Zealander 
musing  upon  the  broken  arch  of  London  Bridge 
appeals  to  the  imagination  of  even  those  who  see 
cities  rising  in  the  wilderness  and  help  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  new  empire.  And  so,  when  we  erect 
a  public  building  we  make  a  hollow  in  the  largest 
corner  stone  and  carefully  seal  within  it  some 
mementos  of  our  day,  looking  forward  to  the  time 
when  our  works  shall  be  ruins  and  ourselves  forgot. 
[19] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Nor  whether  this  alternate  rise  and  fall  of  civiliza- 
tion, this  retrogression  that  always  follows  progres- 
sion, be,  or  be  not,  the  rhythmic  movement  of  an 
ascending  line  (and  I  think,  though  I  will  not  open 
the  question,  that  it  would  be  much  more  difficult 
to  prove  tlie  affirmative  than  is  generally  supposed) 
makes  no  difference;  for  the  current  theory  is  in 
either  case  disproved.  Civilizations  have  died  and 
made  no  sign,  and  hard-won  progress  has  been  lost 
to  the  race  forever,  but,  even  if  it  be  admitted  that 
each  wave  of  progress  has  made  possible  a  higher 
wave  and  each  civilization  passed  the  torch  to  a 
greater  civilization,  the  theory  that  civilization 
advances  by  changes  wrought  in  the  nature  of  man 
fails  to  explain  the  facts;  for  in  every  case  it  is  not 
the  race  that  has  been  educated  and  hereditarily 
modified  by  the  old  civilization  that  begins  the  new, 
but  a  fresh  race  coming  from  a  lower  level.  It  is  the 
barbarians  of  the  one  epoch  who  have  been  the 
civilized  men  of  the  next;  to  be  in  their  turn  suc- 
ceeded by  fresh  barbarians.  For  it  has  been  hereto- 
fore always  the  case  that  men  under  the  influences 
of  civilization,  though  at  first  improving,  afterward 
degenerate.  The  civilized  man  of  to-day  is  vastly 
the  superior  of  the  uncivilized;  but  so  in  the  time  of 
[201 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

its  vigor  was  the  civilized  man  of  every  dead  civiliza- 
tion. But  there  are  such  things  as  the  vices,  the 
corruptions,  the  enervations  of  civilization,  which 
past  a  certain  point  have  always  heretofore  shown 
themselves.  Every  civilization  that  has  been  over- 
whelmed by  barbarians  has  really  perished  from 
internal  decay. 

This  universal  fact,  the  moment  that  it  is  recog- 
nized, disposes  of  the  theory  that  progress  is  by 
hereditary  transmission.  Looking  over  the  history 
of  the  world,  the  line  of  greatest  advance  does  not 
coincide  for  any  length  of  time  with  any  line  of 
heredity.  On  any  particular  line  of  heredity,  retro- 
gression seems  always  to  follow  advance. 

Shall  we  therefore  say  that  there  is  a  national  or 
race  life,  as  there  is  an  individual  life — that  every 
social  aggregate  has,  as  it  were,  a  certain  amount 
of  energy,  the  expenditure  of  which  necessitates 
decay?  This  is  an  old  and  widespread  idea,  that  is 
yet  largely  held,  and  that  may  be  constantly  seen 
cropping  out  incongruously  in  the  writings  of  the 
expounders  of  the  development  philosophy.  Indeed, 
I  do  not  see  why  it  may  not  be  stated  in  terms  of 
matter  and  of  motion  so  as  to  bring  it  clearly  within 
the  generalizations  of  evolution.  For  considering  its 
[21] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

individuals  as  atoms,  the  growth  of  society  is  "an 
integration  of  matter  and  concomitant  dissipation 
of  motion;  during  which  the  matter  passes  from  an 
indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite, 
coherent  heterogeneity,  and  during  which  the  re- 
tained motion  undergoes  a  parallel  transformation."  * 
*  And  thus  an  analogy  may  be  drawn  between  the  life 
of  a  society  and  the  life  of  a  solar  system  upon  the 
nebular  hypothesis.  As  the  heat  and  light  of  the  sun 
are  produced  by  the  aggregation  of  atoms  evolving 
motion,  which  finally  ceases  when  the  atoms  at 
length  come  to  a  state  of  equilibrium  or  rest,  and  a 
state  of  immobility  succeeds,  which  can  be  broken 
in  again  only  by  the  impact  of  external  forces,  which 
reverse  the  process  of  evolution,  integrating  motion 
and  dissipating  matter  in  the  form  of  gas,  again  to 
evolve  motion  by  its  condensation;  so,  it  may  be  said, 
does  the  aggregation  of  individuals  in  a  community 
evolve  a  force  which  produces  the  light  and  warmth  of 
civilization,  but  when  this  process  ceases  and  the 
individual  components  are  brought  into  a  state  of 
equilibrium,  assuming  their  fixed  places,  petrifac- 
tion ensues,  and  the  breaking  up  and  diffusion  caused 
by  an  incursion  of  barbarians  is  necessary  to  the 

*  Herbert  Spencer's  definition  of  Evolution,  "First  Principles,"  p.  396. 

[221 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

recommencement  of  the  process  and  a  new  growth 
of  civilization. 

But  analogies  are  the  most  dangerous  modes  of 
thought.  They  may  connect  resemblances  and  yet 
disguise  or  cover  up  the  truth.  And  all  such  analo- 
gies are  superficial.  While  its  members  are  con- 
stantly reproduced  in  all  the  fresh  vigor  of  childhood, 
a  community  cannot  grow  old,  as  does  a  man,  by  the 
decay  of  its  powers.  While  its  aggregate  force  must 
be  the  sum  of  the  forces  of  its  individual  components, 
a  community  cannot  lose  vital  power  unless  the  vital 
powers  of  its  components  are  lessened. 

Yet  in  both  the  common  analogy  which  likens  the 
life  power  of  a  nation  to  that  of  an  individual,  and 
in  the  one  I  have  supposed,  lurks  the  recognition  of 
an  obvious  truth — the  truth  that  the  obstacles  which 
finally  bring  progress  to  a  halt  are  raised  by  the 
course  of  progress;  that  what  has  destroyed  all  pre- 
vious civilizations  has  been  the  conditions  produced 
by  the  growth  of  civilization  itself. 

This  is  a  truth  which  in  the  current  philosophy  is 
ignored;  but  it  is  a  truth  most  pregnant.  Any  valid 
theory  of  human  progress  must  account  for  it. 


[23] 


II.    DIFFERENCES  IN  CIVILIZATION — To  WHAT  DUE 

IN  attempting  to  discover  the  law  of  human 
progress,  the  first  step  must  be  to  determine 
the  essential  nature  of  those  differences  which 
we  describe  as  differences  in  civilization. 

That  the  current  philosophy,  which  attributes 
social  progress  to  changes  wrought  in  the  nature  of 
man,  does  not  accord  with  historical  facts,  we  have 
already  seen.  And  we  may  also  see,  if  we  consider 
them,  that  the  differences  between  communities  in 
different  stages  of  civilization  cannot  be  ascribed  to 
innate  differences  in  the  individuals  who  compose 
these  communities.  That  there  are  natural  differ- 
ences is  true,  and  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  heredi- 
tary transmission  of  peculiarities  is  undoubtedly 
f  true;  but  the  great  differences  between  men  in 
different  states  of  society  cannot  be  explained  in  this 
way.  The  influence  of  heredity,  which  it  is  now  the 
fashion  to  rate  so  highly,  is  as  nothing  compared 
with  the  influences  which  mold  the  man  after  he 
[24] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

comes  into  the  world.  What  is  more  ingrained  in 
habit  than  language,  which  becomes  not  merely  an 
automatic  trick  of  the  muscles,  but  the  medium  of 
thought?  What  persists  longer,  or  will  quicker  show 
nationality?  Yet  we  are  not  born  with  a  predispo- 
sition to  any  language.  Our  mother  tongue  is  our 
mother  tongue  only  because  we  learned  it  in  infancy. 
Although  his  ancestors  have  thought  and  spoken  in 
one  language  for  countless  generations,  a  child  who 
hears  from  the  first  nothing  else,  will  learn  with  equal 
facility  any  other  tongue.  And  so  of  other  national 
or  local  or  class  peculiarities.  They  seem  to  be 
matters  of  education  and  habit,  not  of  transmission. 
Cases  of  white  children  captured  by  Indians  hi  in- 
fancy and  brought  up  in  the  wigwam  show  this. 
They  become  thorough  Indians.  And  so,  I  believe, 
with  children  brought  up  by  Gypsies. 

That  this  is  not  so  true  of  the  children  of  Indians 
or  other  distinctly  marked  races  brought  up  by 
whites  is,  I  think,  due  to  the  fact  that  they  are  never 
treated  precisely  as  white  children.  A  gentleman 
who  had  taught  a  colored  school  once  told  me  that 
he  thought  the  colored  children,  up  to  the  age  of  ten 
or  twelve,  were  really  brighter  and  learned  more 
readily  than  white  children,  but  that  after  that  age 
[25] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

they  seemed  to  get  dull  and  careless.  He  thought 
this  proof  of  innate  race  inferiority,  and  so  did  I  at 
the  time.  But  I  afterward  heard  a  highly  intelligent 
Negro  gentleman  (Bishop  Hillery)  incidentally  make 
a  remark  which  to  my  mind  seems  a  sufficient  ex- 
planation. He  said:  "Our  children,  when  they  are 
young,  are  fully  as  bright  as  white  children,  and 
learn  as  readily.  But  as  soon  as  they  get  old  enough 
to  appreciate  their  status — to  realize  that  they  are 
looked  upon  as  belonging  to  an  inferior  race,  and  can 
never  hope  to  be  anything  more  than  cooks,  waiters, 
or  something  of  that  sort,  they  lose  their  ambition 
and  cease  to  keep  up."  And  to  this  he  might  have 
added,  that  being  the  children  of  poor,  uncultivated 
and  unambitious  parents,  home  influences  told 
against  them.  For,  I  believe  it  is  a  matter  of  com- 
mon observation  that  in  the  primary  part  of  educa- 
tion the  children  of  ignorant  parents  are  quite  as 
receptive  as  the  children  of  intelligent  parents,  but 
by  and  by  the  latter,  as  a  general  rule,  pull  ahead 
and  make  the  most  intelligent  men  and  women.  The 
reason  is  plain.  As  to  the  first  simple  things  which 
they  learn  only  at  school,  they  are  on  a  par,  but  as 
their  studies  become  more  complex,  the  child  who 
at  home  is  accustomed  to  good  English,  hears  intelli- 
[26] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

gent  conversation,  has  access  to  books,  can  get 
questions  answered,  etc.,  has  an  advantage  which 
tells. 

**~  The  same  thing  may  be  seen  later  in  life.  Take  a 
man  who  has  raised  himself  from  the  ranks  of  com- 
mon labor,  and  just  as  he  is  brought  into  contact 
with  men  of  culture  and  men  of  affairs,  will  he  be- 
come more  intelligent  and  polished.  Take  two 
brothers,  the  sons  of  poor  parents,  brought  up  in  the 
same  home  and  in  the  same  way.  One  is  put  to  a 
rude  trade,  and  never  gets  beyond  the  necessity  of 
making  a  living  by  hard  daily  labor;  the  other, 
commencing  as  an  errand  boy,  gets  a  start  in  an- 
other direction,  and  becomes  finally  a  successful 
lawyer,  merchant,  or  politician.  At  forty  or  fifty 
the  contrast  between  them  will  be  striking,  and  the 
unreflecting  will  credit  it  to  the  greater  natural 
ability  which  has  enabled  the  one  to  push  himself 
ahead.  But  just  as  striking  a  difference  in  manners 
and  intelligence  will  be  manifested  between  two 
sisters,  one  of  whom,  married  to  a  man  who  has  re- 
mained poor,  has  her  life  fretted  with  petty  cares  and 
devoid  of  opportunities,  and  the  other  of  whom  has 
married  a  man  whose  subsequent  position  brings  her 
into  cultured  society  and  opens  to  her  opportunities 
[27] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

which  refine  taste  and  expand  intelligence.  And  so 
deteriorations  may  be  seen.  That  "evil  communica- 
tions corrupt  good  manners"  is  but  an  expression  of 
the  general  law  that  human  character  is  profoundly 
modified  by  its  conditions  and  surroundings. 

I  remember  once  seeing,  in  a  Brazilian  se?,port,  a 
Negro  man  dressed  in  what  was  an  evident  attempt 
at  the  height  of  fashion,  but  without  shoes  and 
stockings.  One  of  the  sailors  with  whom  I  was  in 
company,  and  who  had  made  some  runs  in  the  slave 
trade,  had  a  theory  that  a  Negro  was  not  a  man,  but 
a  sort  of  monkey,  and  pointed  to  this  as  evidence 
in  proof,  contending  that  it  was  not  natural  for  a 
Negro  to  wear  shoes,  and  that  in  his  wild  state  he 
would  wear  no  clothes  at  all.  I  afterward  learned 
that  it  was  not  considered  "the  thing"  there  for  slaves 
to  wear  shoes,  just  as  in  England  it  is  not  considered 
the  thing  for  a  faultlessly  attired  butler  to  wear 
jewelry,  though  for  that  matter  I  have  since  seen 
white  men  at  liberty  to  dress  as  they  pleased  get 
themselves  up  as  incongruously  as  the  Brazilian 
slave.  But  a  great  many  of  the  facts  adduced  as 
showing  hereditary  transmission  have  really  no 
more  bearing  than  this  of  our  forecastle  Darwinian. 
"M  That,  for  instance,  a  large  number  of  criminals  and 
[28] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

recipients  of  public  relief  in  New  York  have  been 
shown  to  have  descended  from  a  pauper  three  or  four 
generations  back  is  extensively  cited  as  showing 
hereditary  transmission.  But  it  shows  nothing  of 
the  kind,  inasmuch  as  an  adequate  explanation  of 
the  facts  is  nearer.  Paupers  will  raise  paupers,  even 
if  the  children  be  not  their  own,  just  as  familiar  con- 
tact with  criminals  will  make  criminals  of  the  chil- 
dren of  virtuous  parents.  To  learn  to  rely  on  charity 
is  necessarily  to  lose  the  self-respect  and  independ- 
ence necessary  for  self-reliance  when  the  struggle  is 
hard.  So  true  is  this  that,  as  is  well  known,  charity 
has  the  effect  of  increasing  the  demand  for  charity, 
and  it  is  an  open  question  whether  public  relief  and 
private  alms  do  not  in  this  way  do  far  more  harm 
than  good.  And  so  of  the  disposition  of  children  to 
show  the  same  feelings,  tastes,  prejudices,  or  talents 
as  their  parents.  They  imbibe  these  dispositions  just 
as  they  imbibe  from  their  habitual  associates.  And 
the  exceptions  prove  the  rule,  as  dislikes  or  revul- 
sions may  be  excited. 

And  there  is,  I  think,  a  subtler  influence  which 

often  accounts  for  what  are  looked  upon  as  atavisms 

of  character — the  same  influence  that  makes  the  boy 

who  reads  dime  novels  want  to  be  a  pirate.    I  once 

[29] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

knew  a  gentleman  in  whose  veins  ran  the  blood  of 
Indian  chiefs.  He  used  to  tell  me  traditions  learned 
from  his  grandfather,  which  illustrated  what  is 
difficult  for  a  white  man  to  comprehend — the  Indian 
habit  of  thought,  the  intense  but  patient  blood 
thirst  of  the  trail,  and  the  fortitude  of  the  stake. 
From  the  way  in  which  he  dwelt  on  these,  I  have  no 
doubt  that  under  certain  circumstances,  highly  educa- 
ted, civilized  man  that  he  was,  he  would  have  shown 
traits  which  would  have  been  looked  on  as  due  to  his 
Indian  blood;  but  which  in  reality  would  have  been 
sufficiently  explained  by  the  breedings  of  his  im- 
agination upon  the  deeds  of  his  ancestors.* 

In  any  large  community  we  may  see,  as  between 
different  classes  and  groups,  differences  of  the  same 
kind  as  those  which  exist  between  communities  which 
we  speak  of  as  differing  in  civilization — differences 
of  knowledge,  belief,  customs,  tastes,  and  speech, 
which  in  their  extremes  show  among  people  of  the 
same  race,  living  in  the  same  country,  differences 
almost  as  great  as  those  between  civilized  and  savage 

*  Wordsworth,  in  his  "Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham  Castle,"  has  in 
highly  poetical  form  alluded  to  this  influence: 
Armor  rusting  in  his  halls 
On  the  blood  of  Clifford  calls; 
"Quell  the  Scot,"  exclaims  the  lance; 
"Bear  me  to  the  heart  of  France," 
Is  the  longing  of  the  shield. 

[30] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

communities.  As  all  stages  of  social  development, 
from  the  stone  age  up,  are  yet  to  be  found  in  con- 
temporaneously existing  communities,  so  in  the 
same  country  and  in  the  same  city  are  to  be  found, 
side  by  side,  groups  which  show  similar  diversities. 
In  such  countries  as  England  and  Germany,  children 
of  the  same  race,  born  and  reared  in  the  same  place, 
will  grow  up,  speaking  the  language  differently, 
holding  different  beliefs,  following  different  customs, 
and  showing  different  tastes;  and  even  in  such  a 
country  as  the  United  States  differences  of  the  same 
kind,  though  not  of  the  same  degree,  may  be  seen 
between  different  circles  or  groups. 

But  these  differences  are  certainly  not  innate.  No 
baby  is  born  a  Methodist  or  Catholic,  to  drop  its  h's 
or  to  sound  them.  All  these  differences  which  dis- 
tinguish different  groups  or  circles  are  derived  from 
association  in  these  circles. 

The  Janissaries  were  made  up  of  youths  torn  from 
Christian  parents  at  an  early  age,  but  they  were  none 
the  less  fanatical  Moslems  and  none  the  less  exhibited 
all  the  Turkish  traits;  the  Jesuits  and  other  orders 
show  distinct  character,  but  it  is  certainly  not  per- 
petuated by  hereditary  transmissions;  and  even  such 
associations  as  schools  or  regiments,  where  the  com- 
[31] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

ponents  remain  but  a  short  time  and  are  constantly 
changing,  exhibit  general  characteristics,  which  are 
the  result  of  mental  impressions  perpetuated  by 
association. 

Now,  it  is  this  body  of  traditions,  beliefs,  customs, 
laws,  habits,  and  associations,  which  arise  in  every 
community  and  which  surround  every  individual — 
this  "super-organic  environment,"  as  Herbert  Spen- 
cer calls  it,  that,  as  I  take  it,  is  the  great  element  in 
determining  national  character.  It  is  this,  rather 
than  hereditary  transmission,  which  makes  the 
Englishman  differ  from  the  Frenchman,  the  German 
from  the  Italian,  the  American  from  the  Chinaman, 
and  the  civilized  man  from  the  savage  man.  It  is 
in  this  way  that  national  traits  are  preserved,  ex- 
tended, or  altered. 

Within  certain  limits,  or,  if  you  choose,  without 
limits  in  itself,  hereditary  transmission  may  develop 
or  alter  qualities,  but  this  is  much  more  true  of  the 
physical  than  of  the  mental  part  of  a  man,  and  much 
more  true  of  animals  than  it  is  even  of  the  physical 
part  of  man.  Deductions  from  the  breeding  of 
pigeons  or  cattle  will  not  apply  to  man,  and  the  rea- 
son is  clear.  The  life  of  man,  even  in  his  rudest 
state,  is  infinitely  more  complex.  He  is  constantly 
[32] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

acted  on  by  an  infinitely  greater  number  of  influ- 
ences, amid  which  the  relative  influence  of  heredity 
becomes  less  and  less.  A  race  of  men  with  no  greater 
mental  activity  than  the  animals — men  who  only 
ate,  drank,  slept,  and  propagated — might,  I  doubt 
not,  by  careful  treatment  and  selection  in  breeding, 
be  made,  in  course  of  time,  to  exhibit  as  great 
diversities  in  bodily  shape  and  character  as  similar 
means  have  produced  in  the  domestic  animals.  But 
there  are  no  such  men;  and  in  men  as  they  are, 
mental  influences,  acting  through  the  mind  upon 
the  body,  would  constantly  interrupt  the  process. 
You  cannot  fatten  a  man  whose  mind  is  on  the 
strain  by  cooping  him  up  and  feeding  him  as  you 
would  fatten  a  pig.  In  all  probability  men  have  been 
upon  the  earth  longer  than  many  species  of  animals. 
They  have  been  separated  from  each  other  under 
differences  of  climate  that  produce  the  most  marked 
differences  in  animals,  and  yet  the  physical  differ- 
ences between  the  different  races  of  men  are  hardly 
greater  than  the  difference  between  white  horses 
and  black  horses — they  are  certainly  nothing  like 
as  great  as  between  dogs  of  the  same  sub-species,  as, 
for  instance,  the  different  varieties  of  the  terrier  or 
spaniel.  And  even  these  physical  differences  between 
[33] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

races  of  men,  it  is  held  by  those  who  account  for 
them  by  natural  selection  and  hereditary  trans- 
mission, were  brought  out  when  man  was  much 
nearer  the  animal — that  is  to  say,  when  he  had  less 
mind. 

And  if  this  be  true  of  the  physical  constitution  of 
man,  in  how  much  higher  degree  is  it  true  of  his 
mental  constitution?  All  our  physical  parts  we  bring 
with  us  into  the  world;  but  the  mind  develops 
afterward. 

There  is  a  stage  in  the  growth  of  every  organism 
in  which  it  cannot  be  told,  except  by  the  environ- 
ment, whether  the  animal  that  is  to  be  will  be  fish 
or  reptile,  monkey  or  man.  And  so  with  the  new- 
born infant;  whether  the  mind  that  is  yet  to  awake 
to  consciousness  and  power  is  to  be  English  or  Ger- 
man, American  or  Chinese — the  mind  of  a  civilized 
man  or  the  mind  of  a  savage — depends  entirely  on  the 
social  environment  in  which  it  is  placed. 

Take  a  number  of  infants  born  of  the  most  highly 
civilized  parents  and  transport  them  to  an  unin- 
habited country.  Suppose  them  in  some  miraculous 
way  to  be  sustained  until  they  come  of  age  to  take 
care  of  themselves,  and  what  would  you  have? 
More  helpless  savages  than  any  we  know  of.  They 
[34] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

would  have  fire  to  discover;  the  rudest  tools  and 
weapons  to  invent;  language  to  construct.  They 
would,  in  short,  have  to  stumble  their  way  to  the 
simplest  knowledge  which  the  lowest  races  now 
possess,  just  as  a  child  learns  to  walk.  That  they 
would  in  time  do  all  these  things  I  have  not  the 
slightest  doubt,  for  all  these  possibilities  are  latent 
in  the  human  mind  just  as  the  power  of  walking  is 
latent  hi  the  human  frame,  but  I  do  not  believe  they 
would  do  them  any  better  or  worse,  any  slower  or 
quicker,  than  the  children  of  barbarian  parents 
placed  in  the  same  conditions.  Given  the  very 
highest  mental  powers  that  exceptional  individuals 
have  ever  displayed,  and  what  could  mankind  be  if 
one  generation  were  separated  from  the  next  by  an 
interval  of  time,  as  are  the  seventeen-year  locusts? 
One  such  interval  would  reduce  mankind,  not  to 
savagery,  but  to  a  condition  compared  with  which 
savagery,  as  we  know  it,  would  seem  civilization. 

And,  reversely,  suppose  a  number  of  savage  in- 
fants could,  unknown  to  the  mothers,  for  even  this 
would  be  necessary  to  make  the  experiment  a  fair 
one,  be  substituted  for  as  many  children  of  civiliza- 
tion, can  we  suppose  that  growing  up  they  would 
show  any  difference?  I  think  no  one  who  has  mixed 
[35] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

much  with  different  peoples  and  classes  will  think 
so.  The  great  lesson  that  is  thus  learned  is  that 
"human  nature  is  human  nature  all  the  world  over." 
And  this  lesson,  too,  may  be  learned  in  the  library. 
I  speak  not  so  much  of  the  accounts  of  travelers,  for 
the  accounts  given  of  savages  by  the  civilized  men 
who  write  books  are  very  often  just  such  accounts 
as  savages  would  give  of  us  did  they  make  flying 
visits  and  then  write  books;  but  of  those  mementos 
of  the  life  and  thoughts  of  other  times  and  other 
peoples,  which,  translated  into  our  language  of  to- 
day, are  like  glimpses  of  our  own  lives  and  gleams  of 
our  own  thought.  The  feeling  they  inspire  is  that  of 
the  essential  similarity  of  men.  "This,"  says  Eman- 
uel  Deutsch — "this  is  the  end  of  all  investigation  into 
history  or  art.  They  were  even  as  we  are." 

There  is  a  people  to  be  found  in  all  parts  of  the 
world  who  well  illustrate  what  peculiarities  are  due 
to  hereditary  transmission  and  what  to  transmission 
by  association.  The  Jews  have  maintained  the 
purity  of  their  blood  more  scrupulously  and  for  a  far 
longer  time  than  any  of  the  European  races,  yet  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  the  only  characteristic  that 
can  be  attributed  to  this  is  that  of  physiognomy, 
and  this  is  in  reality  far  less  marked  than  is  con- 
[36] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

ventionally  supposed,  as  any  one  who  will  take  the 
trouble  may  see  on  observation.  Although  they 
have  constantly  married  among  themselves,  the 
Jews  have  everywhere  been  modified  by  their  sur- 
roundings— the  English,  Russian,  Polish,  German 
and  Oriental  Jews  differing  from  each  other  in 
many  respects  as  much  as  do  the  other  people  of 
those  countries.  Yet  they  have  much  in  common, 
and  have  everywhere  preserved  their  individuality. 
The  reason  is  clear.  It  is  the  Hebrew  religion — and 
certainly  religion  is  not  transmitted  by  generation, 
but  by  association — which  has  everywhere  preserved 
the  distinctiveness  of  the  Hebrew  race.  This  re- 
ligion, which  children  derive,  not  as  they  derive  their 
physical  characteristics,  but  by  precept  and  associ- 
ation, is  not  merely  exclusive  in  its  teachings,  but 
has,  by  engendering  suspicion  and  dislike,  produced 
a  powerful  outside  pressure  which,  even  more  than 
its  precepts,  has  everywhere  constituted  of  the  Jews  a 
community  within  a  community.  Thus  has  been 
built  up  and  maintained  a  certain  peculiar  environ- 
ment which  gives  a  distinctive  character.  Jewish 
intermarriage  has  been  the  effect,  not  the  cause  of 
this.  What  persecution  which  stopped  short  of  tak- 
ing Jewish  children  from  their  parents  and  bringing 
[37] 

185610 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

them  up  outside  of  this  peculiar  environment  could 
not  accomplish,  will  be  accomplished  by  the  lessening 
intensity  of  religious  belief,  as  is  already  evident  in 
the  United  States,  where  the  distinction  between 
Jew  and  Gentile  is  fast  disappearing. 

And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  influence  of  this  social 
net  or  environment  will  explain  what  is  so  often 
taken  as  proof  of  race  differences — the  difficulty 
which  less  civilized  races  show  in  receiving  higher 
civilization,  and  the  manner  in  which  some  of  them 
melt  away  before  it.  Just  as  one  social  environment 
persists,  so  does  it  render  it  difficult  or  impossible 
for  those  subject  to  it  to  accept  another. 

The  Chinese  character  is  fixed  if  that  of  any 
people  is.  Yet  the  Chinese  in  California  acquire 
American  modes  of  working,  trading,  the  use  of 
machinery,  etc.,  with  such  facility  as  to  prove  that 
they  have  no  lack  of  flexibility,  or  natural  capacity. 
That  they  do  not  change  in  other  respects  is  due  to 
the  Chinese  environment  that  still  persists  and  still 
surrounds  them.  Coming  from  China,  they  look 
forward  to  return  to  China,  and  live  while  here  in  a 
little  China  of  their  own,  just  as  the  Englishmen  in 
India  maintain  a  little  England.  It  is  not  merely 
that  we  naturally  seek  association  with  those  who 
[381 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

share  our  peculiarities,  and  that  thus  language,  re- 
ligion and  custom  tend  to  persist  where  individuals 
are  not  absolutely  isolated ;  but  that  these  differences 
provoke  an  external  pressure,  which  compels  such 
association. 

These  obvious  principles  fully  account  for  all  the 
phenomena  which  are  seen  in  the  meeting  of  one 
stage  or  body  of  culture  with  another,  without  resort 
to  the  theory  of  ingrained  differences.  For  instance* 
as  comparative  philology  has  shown,  the  Hindoo  is 
of  the  same  race  as  his  English  conqueror,  and  in- 
dividual instances  have  abundantly  shown  that  if 
he  could  be  placed  completely  and  exclusively  in  the 
English  environment  (which,  as  before  stated,  could 
be  thoroughly  done  only  by  placing  infants  in  English 
families  in  such  a  way  that  neither  they,  as  they 
grow  up,  nor  those  around  them,  would  be  conscious 
of  any  distinction),  one  generation  would  be  all  re- 
quired to  thoroughly  implant  European  civilization. 
But  the  progress  of  English  ideas  and  habits  in  India 
must  be  necessarily  very  slow,  because  they  meet 
there  the  web  of  ideas  and  habits  constantly  perpetu- 
ated through  an  immense  population,  and  interlaced 
with  every  act  of  life. 

Mr.  Bagehot  ("Physics  and  Politics")  endeavors 
[391 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

to  explain  the  reason  why  barbarians  waste  away 
before  our  civilization,  while  they  did  not  before 
that  of  the  ancients,  by  assuming  that  the  progress 
of  civilization  has  given  us  tougher  physical  consti- 
tutions. After  alluding  to  the  fact  that  there  is  no 
lament  in  any  classical  writer  for  the  barbarians,  but 
that  everywhere  the  barbarian  endured  the  contact 
with  the  Roman  and  the  Roman  allied  himself  to  the 
barbarian,  he  says  (pp.  47-8) : 

"Savages  in  the  first  year  of  the  Christian  era  were  pretty  much 
what  they  were  in  the  eighteen  hundredth;  and  if  they  stood  the 
contact  of  ancient  civilized  men  and  cannot  stand  ours,  it  follows 
that  our  race  is  presumably  tougher  than  the  ancient;  for  we  have 
to  bear,  and  do  bear,  the  seeds  of  greater  diseases  than  the  ancients 
carried  with  them.  We  may  use,  perhaps,  the  unvarying  savage 
as  a  meter  to  gauge  the  vigor  of  the  constitution  to  whose  contact 
he  is  exposed." 

Mr.  Bagehot  does  not  attempt  to  explain  how  it  is 
that  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  civilization  did  not 
give  the  like  relative  advantage  over  barbarism  that 
it  does  now.  But  there  is  no  use  of  talking  about 
that,  or  of  the  lack  of  proof  that  the  human  consti- 
tution has  been  a  whit  improved.  To  any  one  who 
has  seen  how  the  contact  of  our  civilization  affects 
the  inferior  races,  a  much  readier  though  less  flatter- 
ing explanation  will  occur. 
[40] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Vlt  is  not  because  our  constitutions  are  naturally 
tougher  than  those  of  the  savage,  that  diseases  which 
are  comparatively  innocuous  to  us  are  certain  death 
to  him.  It  is  that  we  know  and  have  the  means  of 
treating  those  diseases,  while  he  is  destitute  both  of 
knowledge  and  means.  The  same  diseases  with 
which  the  scum  of  civilization  that  floats  in  its  ad- 
vance inoculate  the  savage  would  prove  as  destruc- 
tive to  civilized  men,  if  they  knew  no  better  than  to 
let  them  run,  as  he  in  his  ignorance  has  to  let  them 
run;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  were  as  destruc- 
tive, until  we  found  out  how  to  treat  them.  And 
not  merely  this,  but  the  effect  of  the  impingement  of 
civilization  upon  barbarism  is  to  weaken  the  power 
of  the  savage  without  bringing  him  into  the  condi- 
tions that  give  power  to  the  civilized  man.  While  his 
habits  and  customs  still  tend  to  persist,  and  do  persist 
as  far  as  they  can,  the  conditions  to  which  they  were 
adapted  are  forcibly  changed.  He  is  a  hun  ter  in  a  land 
stripped  of  game;  a  warrior  deprived  of  his  arms 
and  called  on  to  plead  in  legal  technicalities.  He  is 
not  merely  placed  between  cultures,  but,  as  Mr. 
Bagehot  says  of  the  European  half-breeds  in  India, 
he  is  placed  between  moralities,  and  learns  the  vices 
of  civilization  without  its  virtues.  He  loses  his  ac- 
[41] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

custoined  means  of  subsistence,  he  loses  self-respect, 
he  loses  morality;  he  deteriorates  and  dies  away. 
The  miserable  creatures  who  may  be  seen  hanging 
around  frontier  towns  or  railroad  stations,  ready  to 
beg,  or  steal,  or  solicit  a  viler  commerce,  are  not 
fair  representatives  of  the  Indian  before  the  white 
man  had  encroached  upon  his  hunting  grounds. 
They  have  lost  the  strength  and  virtues  of  their 
former  state,  without  gaining  those  of  a  higher.  In 
fact,  civilization,  as  it  pushes  the  red  man,  shows 
no  virtues.  To  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  frontier,  as 
a  rule,  the  aborigine  has  no  rights  which  the  white 
man  is  bound  to  respect.  He  is  impoverished,  mis- 
understood, cheated,  and  abused.  He  dies  out,  as, 
under  similar  conditions,  we  should  die  out.  He 
disappears  before  civilization  as  the  Romanized 
Britons  disappeared  before  Saxon  barbarism. 

The  true  reason  why  there  is  no  lament  in  any 
classic  writer  for  the  barbarian,  but  that  the  Roman 
civilization  assimilated  instead  of  destroying,  is,  I 
take  it,  to  be  found  not  only  in  the  fact  that  the 
ancient  civilization  was  much  nearer  akin  to  the 
barbarians  which  it  met,  but  hi  the  more  important 
fact  that  it  was  not  extended  as  ours  has  been.  It 
was  carried  forward,  not  by  an  advancing  line  of 
[42] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

colonists,  but  by  conquest  which  merely  reduced 
the  new  province  to  general  subjection,  leaving  the 
social,  and  generally  the  political  organization  of  the 
people  to  a  great  degree  unimpaired,  so  that,  with- 
out shattering  or  deterioration,  the  process  of  assimi- 
lation went  on.  In  a  somewhat  similar  way  the  civ- 
ilization of  Japan  seems  to  be  now  assimilating  itself 
to  European  civilization. 

In  America  the  Anglo-Saxon  has  exterminated,  in- 
stead of  civilizing,  the  Indian,  simply  because  he  has 
not  brought  the  Indian  into  his  environment,  nor 
yet  has  the  contact  been  in  such  a  way  as  to  induce 
or  permit  the  Indian  web  of  habitual  thought  and 
custom  to  be  changed  rapidly  enough  to  meet  the 
new  conditions  into  which  he  has  been  brought  by 
the  proximity  of  new  and  powerful  neighbors.  That 
there  is  no  innate  impediment  to  the  reception  of  our 
civilization  by  these  uncivilized  races  has  been 
shown  over  and  over  again  in  individual  cases.  And 
it  has  likewise  been  shown,  so  far  as  the  experiments 
have  been  permitted  to  go,  by  the  Jesuits  in  Para- 
guay, the  Franciscans  in  California,  and  the  Prot- 
estant missionaries  on  some  of  the  Pacific  islands. 

The  assumption  of  physical  improvement  in  the 
race  within  any  time  of  which  we  have  knowledge  is 
[431 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

utterly  without  warrant,  and  within  the  time  of 
which  Mr.  Bagehot  speaks,  it  is  absolutely  disproved. 
v  We  know  from  classic  statues,  from  the  burdens 
carried  and  the  marches  made  by  ancient  soldiers, 
from  the  records  of  runners  and  the  feats  of  gym- 
nasts, that  neither  in  proportions  nor  strength  has  the 
race  improved  within  two  thousand  years.  But  the 
assumption  of  mental  improvement,  which  is  even 
more  confidently  and  generally  made,  is  still  more 
preposterous.  As  poets,  artists,  architects,  philoso- 
phers, rhetoricians,  statesmen,  or  soldiers,  can 
modern  civilization  show  individuals  of  greater 
mental  power  than  can  the  ancient?  There  is  no  use 
in  recalling  names — every  schoolboy  knows  them. 
For  our  models  and  personifications  of  mental 
power  we  go  back  to  the  ancients,  and  if  we  can  for  a 
moment  imagine  the  possibility  of  what  is  held  by 
that  oldest  and  most  widespread  of  all  beliefs — that 
belief  which  Lessing  declared  on  this  account  the 
most  probably  true,  though  he  accepted  it  on  meta- 
physical grounds — and  suppose  Homer  or  Virgil, 
Demosthenes  or  Cicero,  Alexander,  Hannibal  or 
Caesar,  Plato  or  Lucretius,  Euclid  or  Aristotle,  as  re- 
entering  this  life  again  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
can  we  suppose  that  they  would  show  any  inferiority 
[44] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

to  the  men  of  to-day?  Or  if  we  take  any  period  since 
the  classic  age,  even  the  darkest,  or  any  previous 
period  of  which  we  know  anything,  shall  we  not  find 
men  who  in  the  conditions  and  degree  of  knowledge 
of  their  times  showed  mental  power  of  as  high  an 
order  as  men  show  now?  And  among  the  less  ad- 
vanced races  do  we  not  to-day,  whenever  our  atten- 
tion is  called  to  them,  find  men  who  in  their  condi- 
tions exhibit  mental  qualities  as  great  as  civilization 
can  show?  Did  the  invention  of  the  railroad,  coming 
when  it  did,  prove  any  greater  inventive  power  than 
did  the  invention  of  the  wheelbarrow  when  wheel- 
barrows were  not?  We  of  modern  civilization  are 
raised  far  above  those  who  have  preceded  us  and 
those  of  the  less  advanced  races  who  are  our  contem- 
poraries. But  it  is  because  we  stand  on  a  pyramid, 
not  that  we  are  taller.  What  the  centuries  have 
done  for  us  is  not  to  increase  our  stature,  but  to 
build  up  a  structure  on  which  we  may  plant  our  feet. 
Let  me  repeat :  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  all  men 
possess  the  same  capacities,  or  are  mentally  alike, 
any  more  than  I  mean  to  say  that  they  are  physically 
alike.  Among  all  the  countless  millions  who  have 
come  and  gone  on  this  earth,  there  were  probably 
never  two  who  either  physically  or  mentally  were 
[45] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

exact  counterparts.  Nor  yet  do  I  mean  to  say  that 
there  are  not  as  clearly  marked  race  differences  in 
mind  as  there  are  clearly  marked  race  differences  in 
body.  I  do  not  deny  the  influence  of  heredity  in  trans- 
mitting peculiarities  of  mind  in  the  same  way,  and 
possibly  to  the  same  degree,  as  bodily  peculiarities 
are  transmitted.  But  nevertheless,  there  is,  it  seems 
to  me,  a  common  standard  and  natural  symmetry 
of  mind,  as  there  is  of  body,  toward  which  all  devia- 
tions tend  to  return.  The  conditions  under  which 
we  fall  may  produce  such  distortions  as  the  Flat- 
heads  produce  by  compressing  the  heads  of  their 
infants  or  the  Chinese  by  binding  their  daughters' 
feet.  But  as  Flathead  babies  continue  to  be  born 
with  naturally  shaped  heads  and  Chinese  babies  with 
naturally  shaped  feet,  so  does  nature  seem  to  revert 
to  the  normal  mental  type.  A  child  no  more  in- 
herits his  father's  knowledge  than  he  inherits  his 
father's  glass  eye  or  artificial  leg;  the  child  of  the 
most  ignorant  parents  may  become  a  pioneer  of 
science  or  a  leader  of  thought. 

But  this  is  the  great  fact  with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned:   That  the  differences  between  the  people 
of  communities  in  different  places  and  at  different 
times,  which  we  call  differences  of  civilization,  are 
[461 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

not  differences  which  inhere  in  the  individuals,  but 
differences  which  inhere  in  the  society;  that  they  are 
not,  as  Herbert  Spencer  holds,  differences  resulting 
from  differences  in  the  units;  but  that  they  are 
differences  resulting  from  the  conditions  under  which 
these  units  are  brought  in  the  society.  In  short,  I 
take  the  explanation  of  the  differences  which  dis- 
tinguish communities  to  be  this:  That  each  society, 
small  or  great,  necessarily  weaves  for  itself  a  web 
of  knowledge,  beliefs,  customs,  language,  tastes, 
institutions,  and  laws.  Into  this  web,  woven  by  each 
society,  or  rather,  into  these  webs,  for  each  commu- 
nity above  the  simplest  is  made  up  of  minor  societies, 
which  overlap  and  interlace  each  other,  the  individ- 
ual is  received  at  birth  and  continues  until  his  death. 
"This  is  the  matrix  in  which  mind  unfolds  and  from 
which  it  takes  its  stamp.  This  is  the  way  in  which 
customs,  and  religions,  and  prejudices,  and  tastes, 
and  languages,  grow  up  and  are  perpetuated.  This  is 
the  way  that  skill  is  transmitted  and  knowledge  is 
stored  up,  and  the  discoveries  of  one  time  made  the 
common  stock  and  stepping  stone  of  the  next. 
Though  it  is  this  that  often  offers  the  most  serious 
obstacles  to  progress,  it  is  this  that  makes  progress 
possible.  It  is  this  that  enables  any  schoolboy  in 
[47] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

our  time  to  learn  in  a  few  hours  more  of  the  universe 
than  Ptolemy  knew;  that  places  the  most  humdrum 
scientist  far  above  the  level  reached  by  the  giant 
mind  of  Aristotle.  This  is  to  the  race  what  memory 
is  to  the  individual.  Our  wonderful  arts,  our  far- 
reaching  science,  our  marvelous  inventions — they 
have  come  through  this. 

Human  progress  goes  on  as  the  advances  made  by 
one  generation  are  in  this  way  secured  as  the  com- 
mon property  of  the  next,  and  made  the  starting 
point  for  new  advances. 


[48] 


III.    ASSOCIATION  IN  EQUALITY 

^T  TT    "TTIAT,  then,  is  the  law  of  human  prog- 
%/%/       ress — the  law  under  which  civiliza- 
y       y          tion  advances? 

It  must  explain  clearly  and  definitely,  and  not  by 
vague  generalities  or  superficial  analogies,  why, 
though  mankind  started  presumably  with  the  same 
capacities  and  at  the  same  time,  there  now  exist  such 
wide  differences  in  social  development,  ^t  must 
account  for  the  arrested  civilizations  and  for  the 
decayed  and  destroyed  civilizations;  for  the  general 
facts  as  to  the  rise  of  civilization,  and  for  the  petri- 
fying or  enervating  force  which  the  progress  of  civili- 
zation has  heretofore  always  evolved.  It  must  ac- 
count for  retrogression  as  well  as  for  progression; 
for  the  differences  in  general  character  between 
Asiatic  and  European  civilizations;  for  the  differ- 
ence between  classical  and  modern  civilizations;  for 
the  different  rates  at  which  progress  goes  on;  and 
for  those  bursts,  and  starts,  and  halts  of  progress 
[491 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

which  are  so  marked  as  minor  phenomena.  And, 
thus,  it  must  show  us  what  are  the  essential  con- 
ditions of  progress,  and  what  social  adjustments 
advance  and  what  retard  it. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  discover  such  a  law.  We  have 
but  to  look  and  we  may  see  it.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
give  it  scientific  precision,  but  merely  to  point  it  out. 

The  incentives  to  progress  are  the  desires  in- 
herent in  human  nature — the  desire  to  gratify  the 
wants  of  the  animal  nature,  the  wants  of  the  intel- 
lectual nature,  and  the  wants  of  the  sympathetic 
nature;  the  desire  to  be,  to  know,  and  to  do — de- 
sires that  short  of  infinity  can  never  be  satisfied,  as 
they  grow  by  what  they  feed  on. 

Mind  is  the  instrument  by  which  man  advances, 
and  by  which  each  advance  is  secured  and  made  the 
vantage  ground  for  new  advances.  Though  he  may 
not  by  taking  thought  add  a  cubit  to  his  stature, 
man  may  by  taking  thought  extend  his  knowledge 
of  the  universe  and  his  power  over  it,  in  what,  so  far 
as  we  can  see,  is  an  infinite  degree.  The  narrow  span 
of  human  life  allows  the  individual  to  go  but  a  short 
distance,  but  though  each  generation  may  do  but 
little,  yet  generations,  succeeding  to  the  gain  of  their 
predecessors,  may  gradually  elevate  the  status  of 
[50] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

mankind,  as  coral  polyps,  building  one  generation 
upon  the  work  of  the  other,  gradually  elevate  them- 
selves from  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 

Mental  power  is,  therefore,  the  motor  of  progress, 
and  men  tend  to  advance  in  proportion  to  the 
mental  power  expended  in  progression — the  mental 
power  which  is  devoted  to  the  extension  of  knowl- 
edge, the  improvement  of  methods,  and  the  better- 
ment of  social  conditions. 

Now  mental  power  is  a  fixed  quantity — that  is  to 
say,  there  is  a  limit  to  the  work  a  man  can  do  with 
his  mind,  as  there  is  to  the  work  he  can  do  with  his 
body;  therefore,  the  mental  power  which  can  be 
devoted  to  progress  is  only  what  is  left  after  what  is 
required  for  non-progressive  purposes. 

These  non-progressive  purposes  in  which  mental 
power  is  consumed  may  be  classified  as  maintenance 
and  conflict.  By  maintenance  I  mean,  not  only  the 
support  of  existence,  but  the  keeping  up  of  the 
social  condition  and  the  holding  of  advances  already 
gained.  By  conflict  I  mean  not  merely  warfare  and 
preparation  for  warfare,  but  all  expenditure  of  mental 
power  in  seeking  the  gratification  of  desire  at  the 
expense  of  others,  and  in  resistance  to  such  aggres- 
sion. 

[51] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

To  compare  society  to  a  boat.  Her  progress 
through  the  water  will  not  depend  upon  the  exertion 
of  her  crew,  but  upon  the  exertion  devoted  to  pro- 
pelling her.  This  will  be  lessened  by  any  expendi- 
ture of  force  required  for  bailing,  or  any  expenditure 
of  force  in  fighting  among  themselves,  or  in  pulling 
in  different  directions. 

Now,  as  in  a  separated  state  the  whole  powers  of 
man  are  required  to  maintain  existence,  and  mental 
power  is  set  free  for  higher  uses  only  by  the  associa- 
tion of  men  in  communities,  which  permits  the 
division  of  labor  and  all  the  economies  which  come 
with  the  co-operation  of  increased  numbers,  associa- 
tion is  the  first  essential  of  progress*/  Improvement 
becomes  possible  as  men  come  together  in  peaceful 
association,  and  the  wider  and  closer  the  association, 
the  greater  the  possibilities  of  improvement.  And 
as  the  wasteful  expenditure  of  mental  power  in  con- 
flict becomes  greater  or  less  as  the  moral  law  which 
accords  to  each  an  equality  of  rights  is  ignored  or  is 
recognized,  equality  (or  justice)  is  the  second  essen- 
tial of  progress. 

Thus  association in  equality  is  the  law  of 

progress.  Association  frees  mental  power  for  ex- 
penditure in  improvement,  and  equality,  or  jus- 
[52] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

tice,  or  freedom — for  the  terms  here  signify  the 
same  thing,  the  recognition  of  the  moral  law — 
prevents  the  dissipation  of  this  power  in  fruitless 
struggles. 

Here  is  the  law  of  progress,  which  will  explain  all 
diversities,  all  advances,  all  halts,  and  retrogressions. 
Men  tend  to  progress  just  as  they  come  closer  to- 
gether, and  by  co-operation  with  each  other  in- 
crease the  mental  power  that  may  be  devoted  to  im- 
provement, but  just  as  conflict  is  provoked,  or  asso- 
ciation develops  inequality  of  condition  and  power, 
this  tendency  to  progression  is  lessened,  checked, 
and  finally  reversed. 

.J  Given  the  same  innate  capacity,  and  it  is  evident 
that  social  development  will  go  on  faster  or  slower, 
will  stop  or  turn  back,  according  to  the  resistances 
it  meets.  In  a  general  way  these  obstacles  to  im- 
provement may,  in  relation  to  the  society  itself,  be 
classed  as  external  and  internal — the  first  operating 
with  greater  force  in  the  earlier  stages  of  civilization, 
the  latter  becoming  more  important  in  the  later 
stages. 

Man  is  social  in  his  nature.    He  does  not  require 
to  be  caught  and  tamed  in  order  to  induce  him  to  live 
with  his  fellows.  The  utter  helplessness  with  which 
[53] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

he  enters  the  world,  and  the  long  period  required  for 
the  maturity  of  his  powers,  necessitate  the  family 
relation;  which,  as  we  may  observe,  is  wider,  and 
in  its  extensions  stronger,  among  the  ruder  than 
among  the  more  cultivated  peoples.  The  first  socie- 
ties are  families,  expanding  into  tribes,  still  holding 
a  mutual  blood  relationship,  and  even  when  they 
have  become  great  nations  claiming  a  common 
descent. 

Given  beings  of  this  kind,  placed  on  a  globe  of 
such  diversified  surface  and  climate  as  this,  and  it  is 
evident  that,  even  with  equal  capacity,  and  an  equal 
start,  social  development  must  be  very  different. 
The  first  limit  or  resistance  to  association  will  come 
from  the  conditions  of  physical  nature,  and  as  these 
greatly  vary  with  locality,  corresponding  differences 
in  social  progress  must  show  themselves.  The  net 
rapidity  of  increase,  and  the  closeness  with  which 
men,  as  they  increase,  can  keep  together,  will,  in  the 
rude  state  of  knowledge  in  which  reliance  for  sub- 
sistence must  be  principally  upon  the  spontaneous 
offerings  of  nature,  very  largely  depend  upon  cli- 
mate, soil,  and  physical  conformation.  Where  much 
animal  food  and  warm  clothing  are  required;  where 
the  earth  seems  poor  and  niggard;  where  the  exu- 
[541 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

berant  life  of  tropical  forests  mocks  barbarous  man's 
puny  efforts  to  control;  where  mountains,  deserts, 
or  arms  of  the  sea  separate  and  isolate  men,  associ- 
ation, and  the  power  of  improvement  which  it 
evolves,  can  at  first  go  but  a  little  way.  But  on  the 
rich  plains  of  warm  climates,  where  human  existence 
can  be  maintained  with  a  smaller  expenditure  of 
force,  and  from  a  much  smaller  area,  men  can  keep 
closer  together,  and  the  mental  power  which  can  at 
first  be  devoted  to  improvement  is  much  greater. 
Hence  civilization  naturally  first  arises  in  the  great 
valleys  and  table  lands  where  we  find  its  earliest 
monuments. 

But  these  diversities  in  natural  conditions,  not 
merely  thus  directly  produce  diversities  in  social 
development,  but,  by  producing  diversities  in  social 
development,  bring  out  hi  man  himself  an  obstacle, 
or  rather  an  active  counterforce,  to  improvement. 
As  families  and  tribes  are  separated  from  each  other, 
the  social  feeling  ceases  to  operate  between  them, 
and  differences  arise  in  language,  custom,  tradition, 
religion — in  short,  in  the  whole  social  web  which  each 
community,  however  small  or  large,  constantly  spins. 
^Yith  these  differences,  prejudices  grow,  animosities 
spring  up,  contact  easily  produces  quarrels,  aggres- 
[551 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

sion  begets  aggression,  and  wrong  kindles  revenge.* 
And  so  between  these  separate  social  aggregates 
arises  the  feeling  of  Ishmael  and  the  spirit  of  Cain, 
warfare  becomes  the  chronic  and  seemingly  natural 
relation  of  societies  to  each  other,  and  the  powers  of 
men  are  expended  in  attack  or  defense,  in  mutual 
slaughter  and  mutual  destruction  of  wealth,  or  in 
warlike  preparations.  How  long  this  hostility  per- 
sists, the  protective  tariffs  and  the  standing  armies 
of  the  civilized  world  to-day  bear  witness.  Can  we 
wonder  at  the  perpetual  hostilities  of  tribes  and 
clans?  Can  we  wonder  that  when  each  community 
was  isolated  from  the  others — when  each,  uninflu- 
enced by  the  others,  was  spinning  its  separate  web 
of  social  environment,  which  no  individual  can  es- 
cape, that  war  should  have  been  the  rule  and  peace 
the  exception?  "They  were  even  as  we  are." 

*  How  easy  it  is  for  ignorance  to  pass  into  contempt  and  dislike;  how 
natural  it  is  for  us  to  consider  any  difference  in  manners,  customs,  religion, 
etc.,  as  proof  of  the  inferiority  of  those  who  differ  from  us,  any  one  who 
has  emancipated  himself  in  any  degree  from  prejudice,  and  who  mixes 
with  different  classes,  may  see  in  civilized  society.  In  religion,  for  instance, 
the  spirit  of  the  hymn — 

"I'd  rather  be  a  Baptist,  and  wear  a  shining  face. 

Than  for  to  be  a  Methodist  and  always  fall  from  grace," 
is  observable  in  all  denominations.  As  the  English  Bishop  said,  "Ortho- 
doxy is  my  doxy,  and  heterodoxy  is  any  other  doxy,"  while  the  universal 
tendency  is  to  classify  all  outside  of  the  orthodoxies  and  heterodoxies  of 
the  prevailing  religion  as  heathens  or  atheists.  And  the  like  tendency 
is  observable  as  to  all  other  differences. 

[56] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Now,  warfare  is  the  negation  of  association.  The 
separation  of  men  into  diverse  tribes,  by  increasing 
warfare,  thus  checks  improvement;  while  in  the 
localities  where  a  large  increase  in  numbers  is  pos- 
sible without  much  separation,  civilization  gains 
the  advantage  of  exemption  from  tribal  war,  even 
when  the  community  as  a  whole  is  carrying  on  war- 
fare beyond  its  borders.  Thus,  where  the  resistance 
of  nature  to  the  close  association  of  men  is  slightest, 
the  counterforce  of  warfare  is  likely  at  first  to  be 
least  felt;  and  in  the  rich  plains  where  civilization 
first  begins,  it  may  rise  to  a  great  height  while 
scattered  tribes  are  yet  barbarous.  And  thus,  when 
small,  separated  communities  exist  in  a  state  of 
chronic  warfare  which  forbids  advance,  the  first 
step  to  then*  civilization  is  the  advent  of  some  con- 
quering tribe  or  nation  that  unites  these  smaller 
communities  into  a  larger  one,  in  which  internal 
peace  is  preserved.  Where  this  power  of  peaceable 
association  is  broken  up,  either  by  external  assaults 
or  internal  dissensions,  the  advance  ceases  and 
retrogression  begins. 

But  it  is  not  conquest  alone  that  has  operated  to 
promote  association,  and,  by  liberating  mental 
power  from  the  necessities  of  warfare,  to  promote 
[57] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

civilization.  If  the  diversities  of  climate,  soil,  and 
configuration  of  the  earth's  surface  operate  at  first 
to  separate  mankind,  they  also  operate  to  encourage 
exchange.  And  commerce,  which  is  in  itself  a  form 
of  association  or  co-operation,  operates  to  promote 
civilization,  not  only  directly,  but  by  building  up 
interests  which  are  opposed  to  warfare,  and  dispelling 
the  ignorance  which  is  the  fertile  mother  of  prejudices 
and  animosities. 

And  so  of  religion.  Though  the  forms  it  has  as- 
sumed and  the  animosities  it  has  aroused  have  often 
sundered  men  and  produced  warfare,  yet  it  has  at 
other  times  been  the  means  of  promoting  association. 
A  common  worship  has  often,  as  among  the  Greeks, 
mitigated  war  and  furnished  the  basis  of  union, 
while  it  is  from  the  triumph  of  Christianity  over  the 
barbarians  of  Europe  that  modern  civilization 
springs.  Had  not  the  Christian  Church  existed 
when  the  Roman  Empire  went  to  pieces,  Europe, 
destitute  of  any  bond  of  association,  might  have 
fallen  to  a  condition  not  much  above  that  of  the 
North  American  Indians  or  only  received  civilization 
with  an  Asiatic  impress  from  the  conquering  scim- 
iters  of  the  invading  hordes  which  had  been  welded 
into  a  mighty  power  by  a  religion  which,  springing 
[58] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

up  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,  had  united  tribes  sepa- 
rated from  time  immemorial,  and,  thence  issuing, 
brought  into  the  association  of  a  common  faith  a 
great  part  of  the  human  race. 

Looking  over  what  we  know  of  the  history  of  the 
world,  we  thus  see  civilization  everywhere  springing 
up  where  men  are  brought  into  association,  and 
everywhere  disappearing  as  this  association  is  broken 
up.  Thus  the  Roman  civilization,  spread  over 
Europe  by  the  conquests  which  insured  internal 
peace,  was  overwhelmed  by  the  incursions  of  the 
northern  nations  that  broke  society  again  into  dis- 
connected fragments;  and  the  progress  that  now 
goes  on  in  our  modern  civilization  began  as  the 
feudal  system  again  began  to  associate  men  in  larger 
communities,  and  the  spiritual  supremacy  of  Rome 
to  bring  these  communities  into  a  common  relation, 
as  her  legions  had  done  before.  As  the  feudal  bonds 
grew  into  national  autonomies,  and  Christianity 
worked  the  amelioration  of  manners,  brought  forth 
the  knowledge  that  during  the  dark  days  she  had 
hidden,  bound  the  threads  of  peaceful  union  in  her 
all-pervading  organization,  and  taught  association 
hi  her  religious  orders,  a  greater  progress  became 
possible,  which,  as  men  have  been  brought  into 
[591 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

closer  and  closer  association  and  co-operation,  has 
gone  on  with  greater  and  greater  force. 

But  we  shall  never  understand  the  course  of 
civilization,  and  the  varied  phenomena  which  its 
history  presents,  without  a  consideration  of  what  I 
may  term  the  internal  resistances,  or  counterforces, 
which  arise  in  the  heart  of  advancing  society,  and 
which  can  alone  explain  how  a  civilization  once  fairly 
started  should  either  come  of  itself  to  a  halt  or  be 
destroyed  by  barbarians. 

The  mental  power,  which  is  the  motor  of  social 
progress,  is  set  free  by  association,  which  is,  what, 
perhaps,  it  may  be  more  properly  called,  an  integra- 
tion. Society  in  this  process  becomes  more  complex; 
its  individuals  more  dependent  upon  each  other. 
Occupations  and  functions  are  specialized.  Instead 
of  wandering,  population  becomes  fixed.  Instead  of 
each  man  attempting  to  supply  all  of  his  wants,  the 
various  trades  and  industries  are  separated — one 
man  acquires  skill  in  one  thing,  and  another  in  an- 
other thing.  So,  too,  of  knowledge,  the  body  of 
which  constantly  tends  to  become  vaster  than  one 
man  can  grasp,  and  is  separated  into  different  parts, 
which  different  individuals  acquire  and  pursue.  So, 
too,  the  performance  of  religious  ceremonies  tends 
[60] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

to  pass  into  the  hands  of  a  body  of  men  specially 
devoted  to  that  purpose,  and  the  preservation  of 
order,  the  administration  of  justice,  the  assignment 
of  public  duties  and  the  distribution  of  awards,  the 
conduct  of  war,  etc.,  to  be  made  the  special  functions 
of  an  organized  government.  In  short,  to  use  the 
language  in  which  Herbert  Spencer  has  defined  evo- 
lution, the  development  of  society  is,  in  relation  to 
its  component  individuals,  the  passing  from  an  in- 
definite, incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  co- 
herent heterogeneity.  The  lower  the  stage  of  social 
development,  the  more  society  resembles  one  of 
those  lowest  of  animal  organisms  which  arc  without 
organs  or  limbs,  and  from  which  a  part  may  be  cut 
and  yet  live.  The  higher  the  stage  of  social  develop- 
ment, the  more  society  resembles  those  higher  or- 
ganisms in  which  functions  and  powers  are  spe- 
cialized, and  each  member  is  vitally  dependent  en  the 
others. 

Now,  this  process  of  integration,  of  the  specializa- 
tion of  functions  and  powers,  as  it  goes  on  in  society, 
is,  by  virtue  of  what  is  probably  one  of  the  deepest 
laws  of  human  nature,  accompanied  by  a  constant 
liability  to  inequality.  I  do  not  mean  that  inequality 
is  the  necessary  result  of  social  growth,  but  that  it  is 
[61] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

the  constant  tendency  of  social  growth  if  unaccom- 
panied by  changes  in  social  adjustments,  which,  in 
the  new  conditions  that  growth  produces,  will  secure 
equality.  I  mean,  so  to  speak,  that  the  garment  of 
laws,  customs,  and  political  institutions,  which  each 
society  weaves  for  itself,  is  constantly  tending  to 
become  too  tight  as  the  society  develops.  I  mean, 
so  to  speak,  that  man,  as  he  advances,  threads  a 
labyrinth,  in  which,  if  he  keeps  straight  ahead,  he  will 
infallibly  lose  his  way,  and  through  which  reason  and 
justice  can  alone  keep  him  continuously  in  an  ascend- 
ing path. 

For,  while  the  integration  which  accompanies 
growth  tends  in  itself  to  set  free  mental  power  to 
work  improvement,  there  is,  both  with  increase  of 
numbers  and  with  increase  in  complexity  of  the 
social  organization,  a  counter  tendency  set  up  to  the 
production  of  a  state  of  inequality,  which  wastes 
mental  power,  and,  as  It  increases,  brings  improve- 
ment to  a  halt. 

To  trace  to  its  highest  expression  the  law  which 
thus  operates  to  evolve  with  progress  the  force  which 
stops  progress,  would  be,  it  seems  to  me,  to  go  far 
to  the  solution  of  a  problem  deeper  than  that  of  the 
genesis  of  the  material  universe — the  problem  of  the 
[62] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

genesis  of  evil.  Let  me  content  myself  with  pointing 
out  the  manner  in  which,  as  society  develops,  there 
arise  tendencies  which  check  development. 

There  are  two  qualities  of  human  nature  which  it 
will  be  well,  however,  to  first  call  to  mind.  The  one 
is  the  power  of  habit — the  tendency  to  continue  to 
do  things  in  the  same  way;  the  other  is  the  possi- 
bility of  mental  and  moral  deterioration.  The  effect 
of  the  first  in  social  development  is  to  continue 
habits,  customs,  laws  and  methods,  long  after  they 
have  lost  their  original  usefulness,  and  the  effect  of 
the  other  is  to  permit  the  growth  of  institutions  and 
modes  of  thought  from  which  the  normal  perceptions 
of  men  instinctively  revolt. 

'  Now  the  growth  and  development  of  society  not 
merely  tend  to  make  each  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  all,  and  to  lessen  the  influence  of  individuals, 
even  over  their  own  conditions,  as  compared  with 
the  influence  of  society;  but  the  effect  of  association 
or  integration  is  to  give  rise  to  a  collective  power 
which  is  distinguishable  from  the  sum  of  individual 
powers.  Analogies,  or,  perhaps,  rather  illustrations 
of  the  same  law,  may  be  found  in  all  directions.  As 
animal  organisms  increase  in  complexity,  there  arise, 
above  the  life  and  power  of  the  parts,  a  life  and 
[63] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

power  of  the  integrated  whole;  above  the  capability 
of  involuntary  movements,  the  capability  of  volun- 
tary movements.  The  actions  and  impulses  of  bodies 
of  men  are,  as  has  often  been  observed,  different 
from  those  which,  under  the  same  circumstances, 
would  be  called  forth  in  individuals.  The  fighting 
qualities  of  a  regiment  may  be  very  different  from 
those  of  the  individual  soldiers.  But  there  is  no  need 
of  illustrations.  In  the  nature  and  rise  of  rent,  we  may 
trace  the  very  thing  to  which  I  allude.  Where  popu- 
lation is  sparse,  land  has  no  value;  just  as  men 
congregate  together,  the  value  of  land  appears  and 
rises — a  clearly  distinguishable  thing  from  the 
values  produced  by  individual  effort;  a  value  which 
springs  from  association,  which  increases  as  associa- 
tion grows  greater,  and  disappears  as  association 
is  broken  up.  And  the  same  thing  is  true  of  power 
in  other  forms  than  those  generally  expressed  in 
terms  of  wealth. 

Now,  as  society  grows,  the  disposition  to  con- 
tinue previous  social  adjustments  tends  to  lodge 
this  collective  power,  as  it  arises,  in  the  hands  of  a 
portion  of  the  community;  and  this  unequal  dis- 
tribution of  the  wealth  and  power  gained  as  society 
advances  tends  to  produce  greater  inequality,  since 
F641 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

aggression  grows  by  what  it  feeds  on,  and  the  idea  of 
justice  is  blurred  by  the  habitual  toleration  of  in- 
justice. 

In  this  way  the  patriarchal  organization  of  society 
can  easily  grow  into  hereditary  monarchy,  in  which 
the  king  is  as  a  god  on  earth,  and  the  masses  of  the 
people  mere  slaves  of  his  caprice.  It  is  natural  that 
the  father  should  be  the  directing  head  of  the  family, 
and  that  at  his  death  the  eldest  son,  as  the  oldest 
and  most  experienced  member  of  the  little  com- 
munity, should  succeed  to  the  headship.  But  to 
continue  this  arrangement  as  the  family  expands, 
is  to  lodge  power  in  a  particular  line,  and  the  power 
thus  lodged  necessarily  continues  to  increase,  as  the 
common  stock  becomes  larger  and  larger,  and  the 
power  of  the  community  grows.  The  head  of  the 
family  passes  into  the  hereditary  king,  who  comes  to 
look  upon  himself  and  to  be  looked  upon  by  others 
as  a  being  of  superior  rights.  With  the  growth  of 
the  collective  power  as  compared  with  the  power 
of  the  individual,  his  power  to  reward  and  to  punish 
increases,  and  so  increase  the  inducements  to  flatter 
and  to  fear  him;  until  finally,  if  the  process  be  not 
disturbed,  a  nation  grovels  at  the  foot  of  a  throne, 
and  a  hundred  thousand  men  toil  for  fifty  years 
[65] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

to  prepare  a  tomb  for  one  of  their  own  mortal 
kind. 

So  the  war-chief  of  a  little  band  of  savages  is  but 
one  of  their  number,  whom  they  follow  as  their 
bravest  and  most  wary.  But  when  large  bodies 
come  to  act  together,  personal  selection  becomes 
more  difficult,  a  blinder  obedience  becomes  neces- 
sary and  can  be  enforced,  and  from  the  very  necessi- 
ties of  warfare  when  conducted  on  a  large  scale 
absolute  power  arises. 

And  so  of  the  specialization  of  function.  There  is 
a  manifest  gain  in  productive  power  when  social 
growth  has  gone  so  far  that  instead  of  every  pro- 
ducer being  summoned  from  his  work  for  fighting 
purposes,  a  regular  military  force  can  be  specialized ; 
but  this  inevitably  tends  to  the  concentration  of 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  military  class  or  their 
chiefs.  The  preservation  of  internal  order,  the  ad- 
ministration of  justice,  the  construction  and  care  of 
public  works,  and,  notably,  the  observances  of 
religion,  all  tend  in  similar  manner  to  pass  into  the 
hands  of  special  classes,  whose  disposition  it  is  to 
magnify  their  function  and  extend  their  power. 

But  the  great  cause  of  inequality  is  in  the  natural 
monopoly  which  is  given  by  the  possession  of  land. 
[661 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

The  first  perceptions  of  men  seem  always  to  be  that 
land  is  common  property;  but  the  rude  devices  by 
which  this  is  at  first  recognized — such  as  annual 
partitions  or  cultivation  in  common — are  consistent 
with  only  a  low  stage  of  development.  The  idea  of 
property,  which  naturally  arises  with  reference  to 
things  of  human  production,  is  easily  transferred  to 
land,  and  an  institution  which  when  population  is 
sparse  merely  secures  to  the  improver  and  user  the 
due  reward  of  his  labor,  finally,  as  population  be- 
comes dense  and  rent  arises,  operates  to  strip  the 
producer  of  his  earnings.  Not  merely  this,  but  the 
appropriation  of  rent  for  public  purposes,  which 
is  the  only  way  in  which,  with  anything  like  a  high 
development,  land  can  be  readily  retained  as  com- 
mon property,  becomes,  when  political  and  religious 
power  passes  into  the  hands  of  a  class,  the  ownership 
of  the  land  by  that  class,  and  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity become  merely  tenants.  And  wars  and  con- 
quests, which  tend  to  the  concentration  of  political 
power  and  to  the  institution  of  slavery,  naturally 
result,  where  social  growth  has  given  land  a  value, 
in  the  appropriation  of  the  soil.  A  dominant  class, 
who  concentrate  power  in  their  hands,  will  likewise 
soon  concentrate  ownership  of  the  land.  To  them 
[67] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

will  fall  large  partitions  of  conquered  land,  which 
the  former  inhabitants  will  till  as  tenants  or  serfs, 
and  the  public  domain,  or  common  lands,  which  in 
the  natural  course  of  social  growth  are  left  for  awhile 
in  every  country,  and  in  which  state  the  primitive 
system  of  village  culture  leaves  pasture  and  wood- 
land, are  readily  acquired,  as  we  see  by  modern  in- 
stances. And  inequality  once  established,  the 
ownership  of  land  tends  to  concentrate  as  develop- 
ment goes  on. 

I  am  merely  attempting  to  set  forth  the  general 
fact  that  as  a  social  development  goes  on,  inequality 
tends  to  establish  itself,  and  not  to  point  out  the 
particular  sequence,  which  must  necessarily  vary 
with  different  conditions.  But  this  main  fact  makes 
intelligible  all  the  phenomena  of  petrifaction  and 
retrogression.  The  unequal  distribution  of  the  power 
and  wealth  gained  by  the  integration  of  men  in  soci- 
ety tends  to  check,  and  finally  to  counterbalance, 
the  force  by  which  improvements  are  made  and 
society  advances.  On  the  one  side,  the  masses  of  the 
community  are  compelled  to  expend  their  mental 
powers  in  merely  maintaining  existence.  On  the 
other  side,  mental  power  is  expended  in  keeping  up 
and  intensifying  the  system  of  inequality,  in  ostenta- 
[68] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

tion,  luxury,  and  warfare.  A  community  divided 
into  a  class  that  rules  and  a  class  that  is  ruled — into 
the  very  rich  and  the  very  poor,  may  "build  like 
giants  and  finish  like  jewelers";  but  it  will  be  monu- 
ments of  ruthless  pride  and  barren  vanity,  or  of  a 
religion  turned  from  its  office  of  elevating  man  into 
an  instrument  for  keeping  him  down.  Invention 
may  for  awhile  to  some  degree  go  on;  but  it  will  be 
the  invention  of  refinements  in  luxury,  not  the  in- 
ventions that  relieve  toil  and  increase  power.  In 
the  arcana  of  temples  or  hi  the  chambers  of  court 
physicians  knowledge  may  still  be  sought;  but  it  will 
be  hidden  as  a  secret  thing,  or  if  it  dares  come  out 
to  elevate  common  thought  or  brighten  common  life, 
it  will  be  trodden  down  as  a  dangerous  innovator. 
For  as  it  tends  to  lessen  the  mental  power  devoted 
to  improvement,  so  does  inequality  tend  to  render 
men  adverse  to  improvement.  How  strong  is  the 
disposition  to  adhere  to  old  methods  among  the 
classes  who  are  kept  in  ignorance  by  being  compelled 
to  toil  for  a  mere  existence,  is  too  well  known  to 
require  illustration,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  con- 
servatism of  the  classes  to  whom  the  existing  social 
adjustment  gives  special  advantages  is  equally  ap- 
parent. This  tendency  to  resist  innovation,  even 
[691 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

though  it  be  improvement,  is  observable  in  every 
special  organization — in  religion,  in  law>  n^medicine, 
in  science,  in  trade  guilds;  and  it  becomes  intense 
just  as  the  organization  is  close.  A  close  corporation 
has  always  an  instinctive  dislike  of  innovation  and 
innovators,  which  is  but  the  expression  of  an  instinc- 
tive fear  that  change  may  tend  to  throw  down  the 
barriers  which  hedge  it  in  from  the  common  herd, 
and  so  rob  it  of  importance  and  power;  and  it  is 
always  disposed  to  guard  carefully  its  special  knowl- 
edge or  skill. 

It  is  in  this  way  that  petrifaction  succeeds  prog- 
ress. The  advance  of  inequality  necessarily  brings 
improvement  to  a  halt,  and  as  it  still  persists  or  pro- 
vokes unavailing  reactions,  draws  even  upon  the 
mental  power  necessary  for  maintenance,  and  retro- 
gression begins. 

These  principles  make  intelligible  the  history  of 
civilization. 

'  In  the  localities  where  climate,  soil,  and  physical 
conformation  tended  least  to  separate  men  as  they 
increased,  and  where,  accordingly,  the  first  civiliza- 
tions grew  up,  the  internal  resistances  to  progress 
would  naturally  develop  in  a  more  regular  and 
thorough  manner  than  where  smaller  communities, 
[701 


THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

-'  which  in  their  separation  had  developed  diversities, 
were  afterward  brought  together  into  a  closer  asso- 
ciation. It  is  this,  it  seems  to  me,  which  accounts 
for  the  general  characteristics  of  the  earlier  civiliza- 
tions as  compared  with  the  later  civilizations  of 
Europe.  Such  homogeneous  communities,  devel- 
oping from  the  first  without  the  jar  of  conflict  be- 
tween different  customs,  laws,  religions,  etc.,  would 
show  a  much  greater  uniformity.  The  concentrating 
and  conservative  forces  would  all,  so  to  speak,  pull 
together.  Rival  chieftains  would  not  counterbalance 
each  other,  nor  diversities  of  belief  hold  the  growth 
of  priestly  influence  in  check.  Political  and  religious 
power,  wealth  and  knowledge,  would  thus  tend  to 
concentrate  in  the  same  centers.  The  same  causes 
which  tended  to  produce  the  hereditary  king  and 
hereditary  priest  would  tend  to  produce  the  heredi- 
tary artisan  and  laborer,  and  to  separate  society  into 
castes.  ^The  power  which  association  sets  free  for 
progress  would  thus  be  wasted,  and  barriers  to  fur- 
ther progress  be  gradually  raised.  The  surplus 
energies  of  the  masses  would  be  devoted  to  the  con- 
struction of  temples,  palaces,  and  pyramids;  to 
ministering  to  the  pride  and  pampering  the  luxury 
of  their  rulers;  and  should  any  disposition  to  im- 
f711 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

provement  arise  among  the  classes  of  leisure  it 
would  at  once  be  checked  by  the  dread  of  innovation. 
Society  developing  in  this  way  must  at  length  stop 
in  a  conservatism  which  permits  no  further  progress. 

How  long  such  a  state  of  complete  petrification, 
when  once  reached,  will  continue,  seems  to  depend 
upon  external  causes,  for  the  iron  bonds  of  the  social 
environment  which  grows  up  repress  disintegrating 
forces  as  well  as  improvement.  Such  a  community 
can  be  most  easily  conquered,  for  the  masses  of  the 
people  are  trained  to  a  passive  acquiescence  in  a  life 
of  hopeless  labor.  If  the  conquerors  merely  take  the 
place  of  the  ruling  class,  as  the  Hyksos  did  in  Egypt 
and  the  Tartars  in  China,  everything  will  go  on  as 
before.  If  they  ravage  and  destroy,  the  glory  of 
palace  and  temple  remains  but  in  ruins,  population 
becomes  sparse,  and  knowledge  and  art  are  lost. 

European  civilization  differs  in  character  from 
civilizations  of  the  Egyptian  type  because  it  springs 
not  from  the  association  of  a  homogeneous  people 
developing  from  the  beginning,  or  at  least  for  a  long 
time,  under  the  same  conditions,  but  from  the  asso- 
ciation of  peoples  who  in  separation  had  acquired- 
distinctive  social  characteristics,  and  whose  smaller 
organizations  longer  prevented  the  concentration  of 
[72] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

power  and  wealth  in  one  center.  The  physical  con- 
formation of  the  Grecian  peninsula  is  such  as  to 
separate  the  people  at  first  into  a  number  of  small 
communities.  As  those  petty  republics  and  nominal 
kingdoms  ceased  to  waste  their  energies  in  warfare, 
and  the  peaceable  co-operation  of  commerce  ex- 
tended, the  light  of  civilization  blazed  up.  But  the 
principle  of  association  was  never  strong  enough  to 
save  Greece  from  inter-tribal  war,  and  when  this  was 
put  an  end  to  by  conquest,  the  tendency  to  in- 
equality, which  had  been  combated  with  various 
devices  by  Grecian  sages  and  statesmen,  worked  its 
result,  and  Grecian  valor,  art,  and  literature  became 
things  of  the  past.  And  so  in  the  rise  and  extension, 
the  decline  and  fall,  of  Roman  civilization,  may  be 
seen  the  working  of  these  two  principles  of  associa- 
tion and  equality,  from  th*e  combination  of  which 
springs  progress. 

Springing  from  the  association  of  the  independent 
husbandmen  and  free  citizens  of  Italy,  and  gaining 
fresh  strength  from  conquests  which  brought  hostile 
nations  into  common  relations,  the  Roman  power 
hushed  the  world  in  peace.  But  the  tendency  to 
inequality,  checking  real  progress  from  the  first,  in- 
creased as  the  Roman  civilization  extended.  The 
[73] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Roman  civilization  did  not  petrify  as  did  the  homo- 
geneous civilizations  where  the  strong  bonds  of  cus- 
tom and  superstition  that  held  the  people  in  sub- 
jection probably  also  protected  them,  or  at  any  rate 
kept  the  peace  between  rulers  and  ruled;  it  rotted, 
declined  and  fell.  Long  before  Goth  or  Vandal  had 
broken  through  the  cordon  of  the  legions,  even  while 
her  frontiers  were  advancing,  Rome  was  dead  at  the 
heart.  Great  estates  had  ruined  Italy.  Inequality 
had  dried  up  the  strength  and  destroyed  the  vigor  of 
the  Roman  world.  Government  became  despotism, 
which  even  assassination  could  not  temper;  patriot- 
ism became  servility;  vices  the  most  foul  flouted 
themselves  in  public;  literature  sank  to  puerilities; 
learning  was  forgotten;  fertile  districts  became 
waste  without  the  ravages  of  war — everywhere  in- 
equality produced  decay,  political,  mental,  moral, 
and  material.  The  barbarism  which  overwhelmed 
Rome  came  not  from  without,  but  from  within.  It 
was  the  necessary  product  of  the  system  which  had 
substituted  slaves  and  coloni  for  the  independent 
husbandmen  of  Italy,  and  carved  the  provinces  into 
estates  of  senatorial  families. 

•J    Modern  civilization  owes  its  superiority  to  the 

growth  of  equality  with  the  growth  of  association. 

[741 


-      THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Two  great  causes  contributed  to  this — the  splitting 
up  of  concentrated  power  into  innumerable  little 
centers  by  the  influx  of  the  Northern  nations,  and  the 
influence  of  Christianity.  Without  the  first  there 
would  have  been  the  petrifaction  and  slow  decay  of 
the  Eastern  Empire,  where  church  and  state  were 
closely  married  and  loss  of  external  power  brought 
no  relief  of  internal  tyranny.  And  but  for  the  other 
there  would  have  been  barbarism,  without  principle 
of  association  or  amelioration.  The  petty  chiefs 
and  allodial  lords  who  everywhere  grasped  local 
sovereignty  held  each  other  in  check.  Italian  cities 
recovered  their  ancient  liberty,  free  towns  were 
founded,  village  communities  took  root,  and  serfs 
acquired  rights  in  the  soil  they  tilled.  The  leaven  of 
Teutonic  ideas  of  equality  worked  through  the  dis- 
organized and  disjointed  fabric  of  society.  And  al- 
though society  was  split  up  into  an  innumerable 
number  of  separated  fragments,  yet  the  idea  of 
closer  association  was  always  present — it  existed  in 
the  recollections  of  a  universal  empire;  it  existed 
in  the  claims  of  a  universal  church. 

Though  Christianity  became  distorted  and  alloyed 
in  percolating  through  a  rotting  civilization;  though 
pagan  gods  were  taken  into  her  pantheon,  and  pagan 
T751 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

forms  into  her  ritual,  and  pagan  ideas  into  her  creed; 
yet  her  essential  idea  of  the  equality  of  men  was 
never  wholly  destroyed.  And  two  things  happened 
of  the  utmost  moment  to  incipient  civilization — 
the  establishment  of  the  papacy  and  the  celibacy  of 
the  clergy.  The  first  prevented  the  spiritual  power 
from  concentrating  in  the  same  lines  as  the  temporal 
power;  and  the  latter  prevented  the  establishment 
of  a  priestly  caste,  during  a  time  when  all  power 
tended  to  hereditary  form. 

In  her  efforts  for  the  abolition  of  slavery;  in  her 
Truce  of  God;  in  her  monastic  orders;  in  her  coun- 
cils which  united  nations,  and  her  edicts  which  ran 
without  regard  to  political  boundaries;  in  the  low- 
born hands  in  which  she  placed  a  sign  before  which 
the  proudest  knelt;  in  her  bishops  who  by  conse- 
cration became  the  peers  of  the  greatest  nobles;  in 
her  "Servant  of  Servants,"  for  so  his  official  title  ran, 
who,  by  virtue  of  the  ring  of  a  simple  fisherman, 
claimed  the  right  to  arbitrate  between  nations,  and 
whose  stirrup  was  held  by  kings;  the  Church,  in 
spite  of  everything,  was  yet  a  promoter  of  associa- 
tion, a  witness  for  the  natural  equality  of  men;  and 
by  the  Church  herself  was  nurtured  a  spirit  that, 
when  her  early  work  of  association  and  emancipation. 
[761 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

was  well-nigh  done — when  the  ties  she  had  knit  had 
become  strong,  and  the  learning  she  had  preserved 
had  been  given  to  the  world — broke  the  chains  with 
which  she  would  have  fettered  the  human  mind,  and 
in  a  great  part  of  Europe  rent  her  organization. 

The  rise  and  growth  of  European  civilization  is 
too  vast  and  complex  a  subject  to  be  thrown  into 
proper  perspective  and  relation  in  a  few  paragraphs; 
but  in  all  its  details,  as  in  its  main  features,  it  illus- 
trates the  truth  that  progress  goes  on  just  as  society 
tends  toward  closer  association  and  greater  equality. 
Civilization  is  co-operation.  Union  and  liberty  are 
its  factors.  The  great  extension  of  association — not 
alone  in  the  growth  of  larger  and  denser  communi- 
ties, but  in  the  increase  of  commerce  and  the  mani- 
fold exchanges  which  knit  each  community  to- 
gether and  link  them  with  other  though  widely 
separated  communities;  the  growth  of  international 
and  municipal  law;  the  advances  in  security  of 
property  and  of  person,  in  individual  liberty,  and 
towards  democratic  government — advances,  in  short, 
towards  the  recognition  of  the  equal  lights  to  life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness — it  is  these  that 
make  our  modern  civilization  so  much  greater,  so 
much  higher,  than  any  that  has  gone  before.  It  is 
[771 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

these  that  have  set  free  the  mental  power  which  has 
rolled  back  the  veil  of  ignorance  which  hid  all  but  a 
small  portion  of  the  globe  from  men's  knowledge; 
which  has  measured  the  orbits  of  the  circling  spheres 
and  bids  us  see  moving,  pulsing  life  in  a  drop  of 
water;  which  has  opened  to  us  the  antechamber  of 
nature's  mysteries  and  read  the  secrets  of  a  long- 
buried  past;  which  has  harnessed  in  our  service 
physical  forces  beside  which  man's  efforts  are  puny; 
and  increased  productive  power  by  a  thousand  great 
inventions. 

In  that  spirit  of  fatalism  to  which  I  have  alluded 
as  pervading  current  literature,  it  is  the  fashion  to 
speak  even  of  war  and  slavery  as  means  of  human 
progress.  But  war,  which  is  the  opposite  of  associa- 
tion, can  aid  progress  only  when  it  prevents  further 
war  or  breaks  down  anti-social  barriers  which  are 
themselves  passive  war. 

As  for  slavery,  I  cannot  see  how  it  could  ever  have 
aided  in  establishing  freedom,  and  freedom,  the 
synonym  of  equality,  is  from  the  very  rudest  state 
in  which  man  can  be  imagined,  the  stimulus  and 
condition  of  progress.  Auguste  Comte's  idea  that 
the  institution  of  slavery  destroyed  cannibalism  is 
as  fanciful  as  Elia's  humorous  notion  of  the  way  man- 
[78] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

kind  acquired  a  taste  for  roast  pig.  It  assumes  that  a 
propensity  that  has  never  been  found  developed  in 
man  save  as  the  result  of  the  most  unnatural  con- 
ditions— the  direst  want  or  the  most  brutalizing 
superstitions* — is  an  original  impulse,  and  that  he, 
even  in  his  lowest  state  the  highest  of  all  animals, 
has  natural  appetites  which  the  nobler  brutes  do 
not  show.  And  so  of  the  idea  that  slavery  began 
civilization  by  giving  slave  owners  leisure  for  im- 
provement. 

Slavery  never  did  and  never  could  aid  improve- 
ment. Whether  the  community  consist  of  a  single 
master  and  a  single  slave,  or  of  thousands  of  masters 
and  millions  of  slaves,  slavery  necessarily  involves 
a  waste  of  human  power;  for  not  only  is  slave  labor 
less  productive  than  free  labor,  but  the  power  of 
masters  is  likewise  wasted  in  holding  and  watching 
their  slaves,  and  is  called  away  from  directions  in 
which  real  improvement  lies.  From  first  to  last, 
slavery,  like  every  other  denial  of  the  natural 
equality  of  men,  has  hampered  and  prevented  prog- 
ress. Just  in  proportion  as  slavery  plays  an  im- 

*  The  Sanrdwich^Islanders  did  honor  to  their  good  chiefs  by  eating  their 
bodies.  Their  bad  and  tyrannical  chiefs  they  would  not  touch.  The  New 
Zealanders  had  a  notion  that  by  eating  their  enemies  they  acquired  their 
strength  and  valor.  And  thia  seems  to  be  the  general  origin  of  eating 
prisoners  of  war. 

[79] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

portant  part  In  the  social  organization  does  im- 
provement cease.  That  in  the  classical  world  slavery 
was  so  universal,  is  undoubtedly  the  reason  why  the 
mental  activity  which  so  polished  literature  and  re- 
fined art  never  hit  on  any  of  the  great  discoveries 
and  inventions  which  distinguish  modern  civiliza- 
tion. No  slave-holding  people  ever  were  an  inventive 
people.  In  a  slave-holding  community  the  upper 
classes  may  become  luxurious  and  polished;  but 
never  inventive.  Whatever  degrades  the  laborer 
and  robs  him  of  the  fruits  of  his  toil  stifles  the  spirit 
of  invention  and  forbids  the  utilization  of  inventions 
and  discoveries  even  when  made.  To  freedom  alone 
is  given  the  spell  of  power  which  summons  the  genii 
in  whose  keeping  are  the  treasures  of  earth  and  the 
viewless  forces  of  the  air. 

The  law  of  human  progress,  what  is  it  but  the 
moral  law?  Just  as  social  adjustments  promote 
justice,  just  as  they  acknowledge  the  equality  of 
right  between  man  and  man,  just  as  they  insure  to 
each  the  perfect  liberty  which  is  bounded  only  by 
the  equal  liberty  of  every  other,  must  civilization 
advance.  Just  as  they  fail  in  this,  must  advancing 
civilization  come  to  a  halt  and  recede.  Political 
economy  and  social  science  cannot  teach  any  lessons 
[801 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

that  are  not  embraced  in  the  simple  truths  that  were 
taught  to  poor  fishermen  and  Jewish  peasants  by 
One  who  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  was  crucified — 
the  simple  truths  which,  beneath  the  warpings  of 
selfishness  and  the  distortions  of  superstition,  seem 
to  underlie  every  religion  that  has  ever  striven  to 
formulate  the  spiritual  yearnings  of  man. 


[81] 


IV.    SOCIAL  RETROGRESSION 

THIS  consideration  of  the  law  of  human  prog- 
ress not  only  brings  the  politico-economic 
laws,  which  I  have  elsewhere  worked  out, 
within  the  scope  of  a  higher  law — perhaps  the  very 
highest  law  our  minds  can  grasp ;  but  it  proves  that 
the    making    of    land    values    common    property 
would  give  an  enormous  impetus   to  civilization, 
while  the  refusal  to  do  so  must  entail  retrogres- 
sion.    A  civilization  like  ours  must  either  advance 
or  go  back;  it  cannot  stand  »still.     It  is  not  like 
those  homogeneous  civilizations,  such  as  that  of  the 
Nile  Valley,  which  molded  men  for  their  places  and 
put  them  in  it  like  bricks  into  a  pyramid.     It  much 
more  resembles  that  civilization  whose  rise  and  fall 
is  within  historic  times,  and  from  which  it  sprung. 
There  is  just  now  a  disposition  to  scoff  at  any 
implication  that  we  are  not  in  all  respects  progress- 
ing, and  the  spirit  of  our  times  is  that  of  the  edict 
which  the  flattering  premier  proposed  to  the  Chinese 
[821 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Emperor  who  burned  the  ancient  books — "that  all 
who  may  dare  to  speak  together  about  the  She  and 
the  Shoo  be  put  to  death;  that  those  who  make 
mention  of  the  past  so  as  to  blame  the  present  be  put 
to  death  along  with  their  relatives." 

Yet  it  is  evident  that  there  have  been  times  of  de- 
cline, just  as  there  have  been  times  of  advance;  and 
it  is  further  evident  that  these  epochs  of  decline 
could  not  at  first  have  been  generally  recognized. 

He  would  have  been  a  rash  man  who,  when 
Augustus  was  changing  the  Rome  of  brick  to  the 
Rome  of  marble,  when  wealth  was  augmenting  and 
magnificence  increasing,  when  victorious  legions 
were  extending  the  frontier,  when  manners  were 
becoming  more  refined,  language  more  polished,  and 
literature  rising  to  higher  splendors — he  would  have 
been  a  rash  man  who  then  would  have  said  that 
Rome  was  entering  her  decline.  Yet  such  was  the 
case. 

And  whoever  will  look  may  see  that  though  our 
civilization  is  apparently  advancing  with  greater 
rapidity  than  ever,  the  same  cause  which  turned 
Roman  progress  into  retrogression  is  operating  now. 

What  has  destroyed  every  previous  civilization 
has  been  the  tendency  to  the  unequal  distribution 
[83] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

of  wealth  and  power.  This  same  tendency,  operating 
with  increasing  force,  is  observable  in  our  civilization 
to-day,  showing  itself  in  every  progressive  commu- 
nity, and  with  greater  intensity  the  more  progressive 
the  community.  Wages  and  interest  tend  constantly 
to  fall,  rent  to  rise,  the  rich  to  become  very  much 
richer,  the  poor  to  become  more  helpless  and  hope- 
less and  the  middle  class  to  be  swept  away. 

I  have  elsewhere  traced  this  tendency  to  its  cause 
and  shown  by  what  simple  means  this  cause  may  be 
removed.  I  now  wish  to  point  out  how,  if  this  is  not 
done,  progress  must  turn  to  decadence,  and  modern 
civilization  decline  to  barbarism,  as  have  all  previ- 
ous civilizations.  It  is  worth  while  to  point  out  how 
this  may  occur,  as  many  people,  being  unable  to  see 
how  progress  may  pass  into  retrogression,  conceive 
such  a  thing  impossible.  Gibbon,  for  instance, 
thought  that  modern  civilization  could  never  be 
destroyed  because  there  remained  no  barbarians  to 
overrun  it,  and  it  is  a  common  idea  that  the  invention 
of  printing  by  so  multiplying  books  has  prevented 
the  possibility  of  knowledge  ever  again  being  lost. 

The  conditions  of  social  progress,  as  we  have 
traced  the  law,  are  association  and  equality.  The 
general  tendency  of  modern  development,  since  the 
[84] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

time  when  we  can  first  discern  the  gleams  of  civiliza- 
tion in  the  darkness  which  followed  the  fall  of  the 
Western  Empire,  has  been  toward  political  and  legal 
equality — to  the  abolition  of  slavery;  to  the  abroga- 
tion of  status;  to  the  sweeping  away  of  hereditary 
privileges;  to  the  substitution  of  parliamentary  for 
arbitrary  government;  to  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment in  matters  of  religion;  to  the  more  equal 
security  in  person  and  property  of  high  and  low, 
weak  and  strong;  to  the  greater  freedom  of  move- 
ment and  occupation,  of  speech  and  of  the  press. 
The  history  of  modern  civilization  is  the  history  of 
advances  in  this  direction — of  the  struggles  and  tri- 
umphs of  personal,  political,  and  religious  freedom. 
And  the  general  law  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  just  as 
this  tendency  has  asserted  itself  civilization  has 
advanced,  while  just  as  it  has  been  repressed  or 
forced  back  civilization  has  been  checked. 

This  tendency  has  reached  its  full  expression  in  the 
American  Republic,  where  political  and  legal  rights 
are  absolutely  equal,  and,  owing  to  the  system  of 
rotation  in  office,  even  the  growth  of  a  bureaucracy 
is  prevented;  where  every  religious  belief  or  non- 
belief  stands  on  the  same  footing;  where  every  boy 
may  hope  to  be  President,  every  man  has  an  equal 
[85] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

voice  in  public  affairs,  and  every  official  is  mediately 
or  immediately  dependent  for  the  short  lease  of  his 
place  upon  a  popular  vote.  This  tendency  has  yet 
some  triumphs  to  win  in  England,  in  extending  the 
suffrage,  and  sweeping  away  the  vestiges  of  mon- 
archy, aristocracy,  and  prelacy;  while  in  such 
countries  as  Germany  and  Russia,  where  divine 
right  is  yet  a  good  deal  more  than  a  legal  fiction,  it 
has  a  considerable  distance  to  go.  But  it  is  the  pre- 
vailing tendency,  and  how  soon  Europe  will  be 
completely  republican  is  only  a  matter  of  time,  or 
rather  of  accident.  The  United  States  are  therefore, 
in  this  respect,  the  most  advanced  of  all  the  great 
nations,  in  a  direction  in  which  all  are  advancing, 
and  in  the  United  States  we  see  just  how  much  this 
tendency  to  personal  and  political  freedom  can  of 
itself  accomplish. 

Now,  the  first  effect  of  the  tendency  to  political 
equality  was  to  the  more  equal  distribution  of 
wealth  and  power;  for,  while  population  is  com- 
paratively sparse,  inequality  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth  is  principally  due  to  the  inequality  of  per- 
sonal rights,  and  it  is  only  as  material  progress  goes 
on  that  the  tendency  to  inequality  involved  in  the 
reduction  of  land  to  private  ownership  strongly  ap- 
[86] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

pears.  But  it  is  now  manifest  that  absolute  political 
equality  does  not  in  itself  prevent  the  tendency  to 
inequality  involved  in  the  private  ownership  of  land, 
and  it  is  further  evident  that  political  equality,  co- 
existing with  an  increasing  tendency  to  the  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth,  must  ultimately  beget  either 
the  despotism  of  organized  tyranny  or  the  worse 
despotism  of  anarchy. 

To  turn  a  republican  government  into  a  despotism 
the  basest  and  most  brutal,  it  is  not  necessary  for- 
mally to  change  its  constitution  or  abandon  popular 
elections.  It  was  centuries  after  Csesar  before  the 
absolute  master  of  the  Roman  world  pretended  to 
rule  other  than  by  authority  of  a  Senate  that 
trembled  before  him. 

But  forms  are  nothing  when  substance  has  gone, 
and  the  forms  of  popular  government  are  those  from 
which  the  substance  of  freedom  may  most  easily  go. 
Extremes  meet,  and  a  government  of  universal 
suffrage  and  theoretical  equality  may,  under  con- 
ditions which  impel  the  change,  most  readily  be- 
come a  despotism.  For  there  despotism  advances 
in  the  name  and  with  the  might  of  the  people.  The 
single  source  of  power  once  secured,  everything  is 
secured.  There  is  no  unfranchised  class  to  whom 
[87] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

appeal  may  be  made,  no  privileged  orders  who  in 
defending  their  own  rights  may  defend  those  of 
all.  No  bulwark  remains  to  stay  the  flood,  no  emi- 
nence to  rise  above  it.  They  were  belted  barons  led 
by  a  mitered  archbishop  who  curbed  the  Plantagenet 
with  Magna  Charta;  it  was  the  middle  classes  who 
broke  the  pride  of  the  Stuarts;  but  a  mere  aristoc- 
racy of  wealth  will  never  struggle  while  it  can  hope 
to  bribe  a  tyrant. 

And  when  the  disparity  of  condition  increases,  so 
does  universal  suffrage  make  it  easy  to  seize  the 
source  of  power,  for  the  greater  is  the  proportion  of 
power  in  the  hands  of  those  who  feel  no  direct  in- 
terest in  the  conduct  of  government;  who,  tortured 
by  want  and  embruted  by  poverty,  are  ready  to  sell 
their  votes  to  the  highest  bidder  or  follow  the  lead 
of  the  most  blatant  demagogue;  or  who,  made  bitter 
by  hardships,  may  even  look  upon  profligate  and 
tyrannous  government  with  the  satisfaction  we  may 
imagine  the  proletarians  and  slaves  of  Rome  to  have 
felt,  as  they  saw  a  Caligula  or  Nero  raging  among 
the  rich  patricians.  Given  a  community  with  repub- 
lican institutions,  in  which  one  class  is  too  rich  to  be 
shorn  of  its  luxuries,  no  matter  how  public  affairs  are 
administered,  and  another  so  poor  that  a  few  dollars 
[881 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

on  election  day  will  seem  more  than  any  abstract 
consideration;  in  which  the  few  roll  in  wealth  and 
the  many  seethe  with  discontent  at  a  condition  of 
things  they  know  not  how  to  remedy,  and  power 
must  pass  into  the  hands  of  jobbers  who  will  buy  and 
sell  it  as  the  Praetorians  sold  the  Roman  purple,  or 
into  the  hands  of  demagogues  who  will  seize  and 
wield  it  for  a  time,  only  to  be  displaced  by  worse 
demagogues. 

Where  there  is  anything  like  an  equal  distribu- 
tion of  wealth — that  is  to  say,  where  there  is  general 
patriotism,  virtue,  and  intelligence — the  more  demo- 
cratic the  government  the  better  it  will  be;  but 
where  there  is  gross  inequality  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth,  the  more  democratic  the  government  the 
worse  it  will  be;  for,  while  rotten  democracy  may 
not  in  itself  be  worse  than  rotten  autocracy,  its  ef- 
fects upon  national  character  will  be  worse.  To 
give  the  suffrage  to  tramps,  to  paupers,  to  men  to 
whom  the  chance  to  labor  is  a  boon,  to  men  who 
must  beg,  or  steal,  or  starve,  is  to  invoke  destruc- 
tion. To  put  political  power  in  the  hands  of 
men  embittered  and  degraded  by  poverty  is  to  tie 
firebrands  to  foxes  and  turn  them  loose  amid  the 
standing  corn;  it  is  to  put  out  the  eyes  of  a  Samson 
[89] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

and  to  twine  his  arms  around  the  pillars  of  national 
life. 

Even  the  accidents  of  hereditary  succession  or  of 
selection  by  lot,  the  plan  of  some  of  the  ancient  re- 
publics, may  sometimes  place  the  wise  and  just  in 
power;  but  in  a  corrupt  democracy  the  tendency  is 
always  to  give  power  to  the  worst.  Honesty  and 
patriotism  are  weighted,  and  unscrupulousness 
commands  success.  The  best  gravitate  to  the  bot- 
tom, the  worst  float  to  the  top,  and  the  vile  will  only 
be  ousted  by  the  viler.  While  as  national  character 
must  gradually  assimilate  to  the  qualities  that  win 
power,  and  consequently  respect,  that  demoraliza- 
tion of  opinion  goes  on  which  in  the  long  panorama 
of  history  we  may  see  over  and  over  again  trans- 
muting races  of  freemen  into  races  of  slaves. 

As  in  England  in  the  last  century,  when  Parlia- 
ment was  but  a  close  corporation  of  the  aristocracy, 
a  corrupt  oligarchy  clearly  fenced  off  from  the  masses 
may  exist  without  much  effect  on  national  character, 
because  in  that  case  power  is  associated  in  the  popu- 
lar mind  with  other  things  than  corruption.  But 
where  there  are  no  hereditary  distinctions,  and  men 
are  habitually  seen  to  raise  themselves  by  corrupt 
qualities  from  the  lowest  places  to  wealth  and  power,. 
[901 


THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

tolerance  of  these  qualities  finally  becomes  admira- 
tion. A  corrupt  democratic  government  must  finally 
corrupt  the  people,  and  when  a  people  become  cor- 
rupt there  is  no  resurrection.  The  life  is  gone,  only 
the  carcass  remains;  and  it  is  left  but  for  the  plow- 
shares of  fate  to  bury  it  out  of  sight. 

Now  this  transformation  of  popular  government 
into  despotism  of  the  vilest  and  most  degrading 
kind,  which  must  inevitably  result  from  the  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth,  is  not  a  thing  of  the  far 
future.  It  has  already  begun  in  the  United  States, 
and  is  rapidly  going  on  under  our  eyes.  That  our 
legislative  bodies  are  steadily  deteriorating  in  stand- 
ard; that  men  of  the  highest  ability  and  character 
are  compelled  to  eschew  politics,  and  the  arts  of  the 
jobber  count  for  more  than  the  reputation  of  the 
statesman;  that  voting  is  done  more  recklessly  and 
the  power  of  money  is  increasing;  that  it  is  harder 
to  arouse  the  people  to  the  necessity  of  reforms  and 
more  difficult  to  carry  them  out;  that  political  differ- 
ences are  ceasing  to  be  differences  of  principle,  and 
abstract  ideas  are  losing  their  power;  that  parties 
are  passing  into  the  control  of  what  in  general  gov- 
ernment would  be  oligarchies  and  dictatorships;  are 
all  evidences  of  political  decline. 
[91] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

The  type  of  modern  growth  is  the  great  city.  Here 
are  to  be  found  the  greatest  wealth  and  the  deepest 
poverty.  And  it  is  here  that  popular  government 
has  most  clearly  broken  down.  In  all  the  great 
American  cities  there  is  to-day  as  clearly  defined  a 
ruling  class  as  in  the  most  aristocratic  countries  of 
the  world.  Its  members  carry  wards  in  their  pockets, 
make  up  the  slates  for  nominating  conventions,  dis- 
tribute offices  as  they  bargain  together,  and — though 
they  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin — wear  the  best  of 
raiment  and  spend  money  lavishly.  They  are  men  of 
power,  whose  favor  the  ambitious  must  court  and 
whose  vengeance  he  must  avoid.  Who  are  these 
men?  The  wise,  the  good,  the  learned — men  who 
have  earned  the  confidence  of  their  fellow-citizens 
by  the  purity  of  their  lives,  the  splendor  of  their 
talents,  their  probity  in  public  trusts,  their  deep 
study  of  the  problems  of  government?  No;  they 
are  gamblers,  saloon  keepers,  pugilists,  or  worse,  who 
have  made  a  trade  of  controlling  votes  and  of  buying 
and  selling  offices  and  official  acts.  They  stand  to 
the  government  of  these  cities  as  the  Praetorian 
Guards  did  to  that  of  declining  Rome.  He  who 
would  wear  the  purple,  fill  the  curule  chair,  or  have 
the  fasces  carried  before  him,  must  go  or  send  his 
[92] 


THE  LAW  OP  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

messengers  to  their  camps,  give  them  donations  and 
make  them  promises.  It  is  through  these  men  that 
the  rich  corporations  and  powerful  pecuniary  in- 
terests can  pack  the  Senate  and  the  bench  with  their 
creatures.  It  is  these  men  who  make  School  Direc- 
tors, Supervisors,  Assessors,  members  of  the  Legisla- 
ture, Congressmen.  Why,  there  are  many  election 
districts  in  the  United  States  in  which  a  George 
Washington,  a  Benjamin  Franklin  or  a  Thomas 
Jefferson  could  no  more  go  to  the  lower  house  of  a 
State  Legislature  than  under  the  Ancient  Regime 
a  base-born  peasant  could  become  a  Marshal  of 
France.  Their  very  character  would  be  an  insuper- 
able disqualification. 

In  theory  we  are  intense  democrats.  The  proposal 
to  sacrifice  swine  in  the  temple  would  hardly  have 
excited  greater  horror  and  indignation  in  Jerusalem 
of  old  than  would  among  us  that  of  conferring  a  dis- 
tinction of  rank  upon  our  most  eminent  citizen.  But 
is  there  not  growing  up  among  us  a  class  who  have 
all  the  power  without  any  of  the  virtues  of  aristoc- 
racy? We  have  simple  citizens  who  control  thou- 
sands of  miles  of  railroad,  millions  of  acres  of  land, 
the  means  of  livelihood  of  great  numbers  of  men; 
who  name  the  Governors  of  sovereign  States  as  they 
[931 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

name  their  clerks,  choose  Senators  as  they  choose 
attorneys,  and  whose  will  is  as  supreme  with  Legisla- 
tures as  that  of  a  French  King  sitting  in  bed  of 
justice.  The  undercurrents  of  the  times  seem  to 
sweep  us  back  again  to  the  old  conditions  from  which 
we  dreamed  we  had  escaped.  The  development  of 
the  artisan  and  commercial  classes  gradually  broke 
down  feudalism  after  it  had  become  so  complete 
that  men  thought  of  heaven  as  organized  on  a  feudal 
basis,  and  ranked  the  first  and  second  persons  of  the 
Trinity  as  suzerain  and  tenant-in-chief.  But  now  the 
development  of  manufactures  and  exchange,  acting 
in  a  social  organization  hi  which  land  is  made  private 
property,  threatens  to  compel  every  worker  to  seek 
a  master,  as  the  insecurity  which  followed  the  final 
break-up  of  the  Roman  Empire  compelled  every 
freeman  to  seek  a  lord.  Nothing  seems  exempt  from 
this  tendency.  Industry  everywhere  tends  to  as- 
sume a  form  in  which  one  is  master  and  many  serve. 
And  when  one  is  master  and  the  others  serve,  the  one 
will  control  the  others,  even  in  such  matters  as  votes. 
Just  as  the  English  landlord  votes  his  tenants,  so 
does  the  New  England  mill  owner  vote  his  operatives. 
•v  There  is  no  mistaking  it — the  very  foundations  of 
society  are  being  sapped  before  our  eyes,  while  we 
[94] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

ask,  how  is  it  possible  that  such  a  civilization  as  this, 
with  its  railroads,  and  daily  newspapers,  and  electric 
telegraphs,  should  ever  be  destroyed?  While  litera- 
ture breathes  but  the  belief  that  we  have  been,  are, 
and  for  the  future  must  be,  leaving  the  savage  state 
further  and  further  behind  us,  there  are  indications 
that  we  are  actually  turning  back  again  toward 
barbarism.  Let  me  illustrate:  One  of  the  charac- 
teristics of  barbarism  is  the  low  regard  for  the  rights 
of  person  and  of  property.  That  the  laws  of  our 
Anglo-Saxon  ancestors  imposed  as  penalty  for  mur- 
der a  fine  proportioned  to  the  rank  of  the  victim, 
while  our  law  knows  no  distinction  of  rank,  and  pro- 
tects the  lowest  from  the  highest,  the  poorest  from 
the  richest,  by  the  uniform  penalty  of  death,  is  looked 
upon  as  evidence  of  their  barbarism  and  our  civiliza- 
tion. And  so,  that  piracy,  and  robbery,  and  slave- 
trading,  and  black-mailing,  were  once  regarded  as 
legitimate  occupations,  is  conclusive  proof  of  the  rude 
state  of  development  from  which  we  have  so  far 
progressed. 

But  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that,  in  spite  of  our  laws, 

any  one  who  has  money  enough  and  wants  to  kill 

another  may  go  into  any  one  of  our  great  centers  of 

population  and  business,  and  gratify  his  desire,  and 

[951 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

then  surrender  himself  to  justice,  with  the  chances 
as  a  hundred  to  one  that  he  will  suffer  no  greater 
penalty  than  a  temporary  imprisonment  and  the 
loss  of  a  sum  proportioned  partly  to  his  own  wealth 
and  partly  to  the  wealth  and  standing  of  the  man  he 
kills.  His  money  will  be  paid,  not  to  the  family  of 
the  murdered  man,  who  have  lost  their  protector; 
not  to  the  state,  which  has  lost  a  citizen;  but  to 
lawyers  who  understand  how  to  secure  delays,  to 
find  witnesses,  and  get  juries  to  disagree. 

And  so,  if  a  man  steal  enough,  he  may  be  sure  that 
his  punishment  will  practically  amount  but  to  the 
loss  of  a  part  of  the  proceeds  of  his  theft;  and  if  he 
steal  enough  to  get  off  with  a  fortune,  he  will  be 
greeted  by  his  acquaintances  as  a  viking  might  have 
been  greeted  after  a  successful  cruise.  Even  though 
he  robbed  those  who  trusted  him;  even  though  he 
robbed  the  widow  and  the  fatherless;  he  has  only 
to  get  enough,  and  he  may  safely  flaunt  his  wealth 
in  the  eyes  of  day. 

Now,  the  tendency  in  this  direction  is  an  increas- 
ing one.  It  is  shown  in  greatest  force  where  the 
inequalities  in  the  distribution  of  wealth  are  great- 
est, and  it  shows  itself  as  they  increase.  If  it  be  not 
a  return  to  barbarism,  what  is  it?  The  failures  of 
[96] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

justice  to  which  I  have  alluded  are  only  illustrative 
of  the  increasing  debility  of  our  legal  machinery  in 
every  department.  It  is  becoming  common  to  hear 
men  say  that  it  would  be  better  to  revert  to  first 
principles  and  abolish  law,  for  then  in  self-defense 
the  people  would  form  Vigilance  Committees  and 
take  justice  into  their  own  hands.  Is  this  indicative 
of  advance  or  retrogression? 

All  this  is  matter  of  common  observation.  Though 
we  may  not  speak  it  openly,  the  general  faith 
in  republican  institutions  is,  where  they  have 
reached  their  fullest  development,  narrowing  and 
weakening.  It  is  no  longer  that  confident  belief  in 
republicanism  as  the  source  of  national  blessings 
that  it  once  was.  Thoughtful  men  are  beginning  to 
see  its  dangers,  without  seeing  how  to  escape  them; 
are  beginning  to  accept  the  view  of  Macaulay  and 
distrust  that  of  Jefferson.*  And  the  people  at  large 
are  becoming  used  to  the  growing  corruption.  The 
most  ominous  political  sign  in  the  United  States 
to-day  is  the  growth  of  a  sentiment  which  either 
doubts  the  existence  of  an  honest  man  in  public 
office  or  looks  on  him  as  a  fool  for  not  seizing  his  op- 
portunities. That  is  to  say,  the  people  themselves 

*  See  Macaulay's  letter  to  Randall,  the  biographer  of  Jefferson. 

[97] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

are  becoming  corrupted,  ^hus  in  the  United  States 
to-day  is  republican  government  running  the  course 
it  must  inevitably  follow  under  conditions  which 
cause  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth. 

Where  that  course  leads  is  clear  to  whoever  will 
think.  As  corruption  becomes  chronic;  as  public 
spirit  is  lost;  as  traditions  of  honor,  virtue,  and 
patriotism  are  weakened;  as  law  is  brought  into 
contempt  and  reforms  become  hopeless;  then  in  the 
festering  mass  will  be  generated  volcanic  forces 
which  shatter  and  rend  when  seeming  accident  gives 
them  vent.  Strong,  unscrupulous  men,  rising  up 
upon  occasion,  will  become  the  exponents  of  blind 
popular  desires  or  fierce  popular  passions,  and  dash 
aside  forms  that  have  lost  their  vitality.  The  sword 
will  again  be  mightier  than  the  pen,  and  in  carnivals 
of  destruction  brute  force  and  wild  frenzy  will  al- 
ternate with  the  lethargy  of  a  declining  civilization. 

I  speak  of  the  United  States  only  because  the 
United  States  is  the  most  advanced  of  all  the  great 
nations.  What  shall  we  say  of  Europe,  where  dams 
of  ancient  law  and  custom  pen  up  the  swelling 
waters  and  standing  armies  weigh  down  the  safety 
valves,  though  year  by  year  the  fires  grow  hotter 
underneath?  Europe  tends  to  republicanism  under 
[981 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

conditions  that  will  not  admit  of  true  republicanism 
— under  conditions  that  substitute  for  the  calm  and 
august  figure  of  Liberty  the  petroleuse  and  the 
guillotine! 

Whence  shall  come  the  new  barbarians?  Go 
through  the  squalid  quarters  of  great  cities,  and  you 
may  see,  even  now,  their  gathering  hordes!  How 
shall  learning  perish?  Men  will  cease  to  read,  and 
books  will  kindle  fires  and  be  turned  into  cartridges! 

It  is  startling  to  think  how  slight  the  traces  that 
would  be  left  of  our  civilization  did  it  pass  through 
the  throes  which  have  accompanied  the  decline  of 
every  previous  civilization.  Paper  will  not  last  like 
parchment,  nor  are  our  most  massive  buildings  and 
monuments  to  be  compared  in  solidity  with  the  rock- 
hewn  temples  and  titanic  edifices  of  the  old  civiliza- 
tions.* And  invention  has  given  us,  not  merely  the 
steam  engine  and  the  printing  press,  but  petroleum, 
nitro-glycerine,  and  dynamite. 

Yet  to  hint,  to-day,  that  our  civilization  may 
possibly  be  tending  to  decline,  seems  like  the  wild- 
ness  of  pessimism.  The  special  tendencies  to  which 

*  It  is  also,  it  seems  to  me,  instructive  to  note  how  inadequate  and 
utterly  misleading  would  be  the  idea  of  our  civilization  which  could  be 
gained  from  the  religious  and  funereal  monuments  of  our  time,  which  are 
all  we  have  from  which  to  gain  our  ideas  of  the  buried  civilizations. 

[991 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

I  have  alluded  are  obvious  to  thinking  men,  but  with 
the  majority  of  thinking  men,  as  with  the  great 
masses,  the  belief  in  substantial  progress  is  yet  deep 
and  strong — a  fundamental  belief  which  admits  not 
the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 

But  any  one  who  will  think  over  the  matter  will 
see  that  this  must  necessarily  be  the  case  where  ad- 
vance gradually  passes  into  retrogression.  For  in 
social  development,  as  in  everything  else,  motion 
tends  to  persist  in  straight  lines,  and  therefore,  where 
there  has  been  a  previous  advance,  it  is  extremely 
difficult  to  recognize  decline,  even  when  it  has  fully 
commenced;  there  is  an  almost  irresistible  tendency 
to  believe  that  the  forward  movement  which  has  been 
advance,  and  is  still  going  on,  is  still  advance.  The 
web  of  beliefs,  customs,  laws,  institutions,  and 
habits  of  thought,  which  each  community  is  con- 
stantly spinning,  and  which  produces  in  the  individ- 
ual environed  by  it  all  the  differences  of  national 
character,  is  never  unraveled.  That  is  to  say,  in  the 
decline  of  civilization,  communities  do  not  go  down 
by  the  same  paths  that  they  came  up.  For  instance, 
the  decline  of  civilization  as  manifested  in  govern- 
ment would  not  take  us  back  from  republicanism  to 
constitutional  monarchy,  and  thence  to  the  feudal 

nooi 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

system;  it  would  take  us  to  imperatorship  and 
anarchy.  As  manifested  in  religion,  it  would  not 
take  us  back  into  the  faiths  of  our  forefathers, 
into  Protestantism  or  Catholicity,  but  into  new 
forms  of  superstition,  of  which  possibly  Mormon  ism 
and  other  even  grosser  "isms"  may  give  some  vague 
idea.  As  manifested  in  knowledge,  it  would  not  take 
us  toward  Bacon,  but  toward  the  literati  of  China. 
And  how  the  retrogression  of  civilization,  follow- 
ing a  period  of  advance,  may  be  so  gradual  as  to  at- 
tract no  attention  at  the  time;  nay,  how  that  decline 
must  necessarily,  by  the  great  majority  of  men,  be 
mistaken  for  advance,  is  easily  seen.  For  instance, 
there  is  an  enormous  difference  between  Grecian  art 
of  the  classic  period  and  that  of  the  lower  empire; 
yet  the  change  was  accompanied,  or  rather  caused 
by  a  change  of  taste.  The  artists  who  most  quickly 
followed  this  change  of  taste  were  in  their  day  re- 
garded as  the  superior  artists.  And  so  of  literature. 
As  it  became  more  vapid,  puerile,  and  stilted,  it 
would  be  in  obedience  to  an  altered  taste,  which 
would  regard  its  increasing  weakness  as  increasing 
strength  and  beauty.  The  really  good  writer  would 
not  find  readers;  he  would  be  regarded  as  rude,  dry, 
or  dull.  And  so  would  the  drama  decline;  not  be- 
[  101  1  - 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

cause  there  was  a  lack  of  good  plays,  but  because  the 
prevailing  taste  became  more  and  more  that  of  a  less 
cultured  class,  who,  of  course,  regard  that  which  they 
most  admire  as  the  best  of  its  kind.  And  so,  too,  of 
religion;  the  superstitions  which  a  superstitious  peo- 
ple will  add  to  it  will  be  regarded  by  them  as  im- 
provements. While,  as  the  decline  goes  on,  the  return 
to  barbarism,  where  it  is  not  in  itself  regarded  as  an 
advance,  will  seem  necessary  to  meet  the  exigencies 
of  the  times. 

For  instance,  flogging,  as  a  punishment  for  certain 
offenses,  has  been  recently  restored  to  the  penal  code 
of  England,  and  has  been  strongly  advocated  on  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  I  express  no  opinion  as  to 
whether  this  is  or  is  not  a  better  punishment  for 
crime  than  imprisonment.  I  only  point  to  the  fact 
as  illustrating  how  an  increasing  amount  of  crime  and 
an  increasing  embarrassment  as  to  the  maintenance 
of  prisoners  might  lead  to  a  fuller  return  to  the 
physical  cruelty  of  barbarous  codes.  The  use  of 
torture  in  judicial  investigations,  which  steadily 
grew  with  the  decline  of  Roman  civilization,  it  is 
thus  easy  to  see,  might,  as  manners  brutalized  and 
crime  increased,  be  demanded  as  a  necessary  im- 
provement of  the  criminal  law. 
[102] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

Whether  hi  the  present  drifts  of  opinion  and  taste 
there  are  as  yet  any  indications  of  retrogression,  it  is 
not  necessary  to  inquire;  but  there  are  many  things 
about  which  there  can  be  no  dispute,  which  go  to 
show  that  our  civilisation  has  reached  a  critical 
period,  and  that  unless  a  new  start  is  made  in  the 
direction  of  social  equality,  the  nineteenth  century 
may  to  the  future  mark  its  climax.  These  industrial 
depressions,  which  cause  as  much  waste  and  suffering 
as  famines  or  wars,  are  like  the  twinges  and  shocks 
which  precede  paralysis.  Everywhere  is  it  evident 
that  the  tendency  to  inequality,  which  is  the  neces- 
sary result  of  material  progress  where  land  is  monop- 
olized, cannot  go  much  further  without  carrying 
our  civilization  into  that  downward  path  which  is 
so  easy  to  enter  and  so  hard  to  abandon.  Every- 
where the  increasing  intensity  of  the  struggle  to  live, 
the  increasing  necessity  for  straining  every  nerve  to 
prevent  being  thrown  down  and  trodden  under  foot 
in  the  scramble  for  wealth,  is  draining  the  forces 
which  gain  and  maintain  improvements.  In  every 
civilized  country  pauperism,  crime,  insanity,  and 
suicides  are  increasing.  In  every  civilized  country 
the  diseases  are  increasing  which  come  from  over- 
strained nerves,  from  insufficient  nourishment,  from 
[1031 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

squalid  lodgings,  from  unwholesome  and  monoto- 
nous occupations,  from  premature  labor  of  children, 
from  the  tasks  and  crimes  which  poverty  imposes 
upon  women.  In  every  highly  civilized  country  the 
expectation  of  life,  which  gradually  rose  for  several 
centuries,  and  which  seems  to  have  culminated  about 
the  first  quarter  of  this  century,  appears  to  be  now 
diminishing.* 

It  is  not  an  advancing  civilization  that  such 
figures  show.  It  is  a  civilization  which  in  its  under- 
currents has  already  begun  to  recede.  When  the  tide 
turns  in  bay  or  river  from  flood  to  ebb,  it  is  not  all  at 
once;  but  here  it  still  runs  on,  though  there  it  has 
begun  to  recede.  When  the  sun  passes  the  meridian, 
it  can  be  told  only  by  the  way  the  short  shadows  fall; 
for  the  heat  of  the  day  yet  increases.  But  as  sure  as 
the  turning  tide  must  soon  run  full  ebb;  as  sure  as 
the  declining  sun  must  bring  darkness,  so  sure  is  it, 
that  though  knowledge  yet  increases  and  invention 
marches  on,  and  new  states  are  being  settled,  and 
cities  still  expand,  yet  civilization  has  begun  to  wane 
when,  in  proportion  to  population,  we  must  build 

*  Statistics  which  show  these  things  are  collected  in  convenient  form  in 
a  volume  entitled  "Deterioration  and  Race  Education,"  by  Samuel  Royce, 
which  has  been  largely  distributed  by  the  venerable  Peter  Cooper  of  New 
York.  Strangely  enough,  the  only  remedy  proposed  by  Mr.  Royce  is  the 
establishment  of  Kindergarten  schools. 

[104] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

more  and  more  prisons,  more  and  more  almshouses, 
more  and  more  insane  asylums.  It  is  not  from  top 
to  bottom  that  societies  die;  it  is  from  bottom  to 
top. 

But  there  are  evidences  far  more  palpable  than  any 
that  can  be  given  by  statistics,  of  tendencies  to  the 
ebb  of  civilization.  There  is  a  vague  but  general 
feeling  of  disappointment;  an  increased  bitterness 
among  the  working  classes;  a  widespread  feeling  of 
unrest  and  brooding  revolution.  If  this  were  ac- 
companied by  a  definite  idea  of  how  relief  is  to  be 
obtained,  it  would  be  a  hopeful  sign;  but  it  is  not. 
Though  the  schoolmaster  has  been  abroad  some 
time,  the  general  power  of  tracing  effect  to  cause  does 
not  seem  a  whit  improved.  The  reaction  toward 
protectionism,  as  the  reaction  toward  other  exploded 
fallacies  of  government,  shows  this.*  And  even  the 
philosophic  free-thinker  cannot  look  upon  that  vast 
change  in  religious  ideas  that  is  now  sweeping  over 
the  civilized  world  without  feeling  that  this  tre- 
mendous fact  may  have  most  momentous  relations, 
which  only  the  future  can  develop.  For  what  is 

*  In  point  of  constructive  statesmanship — the  recognition  of  fundamental 
principles  and  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  adopted  a  century  ago,  is  greatly  superior  to  the  latest  State 
Constitutions,  the  most  recent  of  which  is  that  of  California — a  piece  of 
utter  botchwork. 

[105] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

going  on  is  not  a  change  in  the  form  of  religion,  but 
the  negation  and  destruction  of  the  ideas  from 
which  religion  springs.  Christianity  is  not  simply 
clearing  itself  of  superstitions,  but  in  the  popular 
mind  it  is  dying  at  the  root,  as  the  old  paganisms 
were  dying  when  Christianity  entered  the  world. 
And  nothing  arises  to  take  its  place.  The  funda- 
mental ideas  of  an  intelligent  Creator  and  of  a  future 
life  are  in  the  general  mind  rapidly  weakening. 
Now,  whether  this  may  or  may  not  be  in  itself  an 
advance,  the  importance  of  the  part  which  religion 
has  played  in  the  world's  history  shows  the  im- 
portance of  the  change  that  is  now  going  on.  Un- 
less human  nature  has  suddenly  altered  in  what  the 
universal  history  of  the  race  shows  to  be  its  deepest 
characteristics,  the  mightiest  actions  and  reactions 
are  thus  preparing.  Such  stages  of  thought  have 
heretofore  always  marked  periods  of  transition.  On 
a  smaller  scale  and  to  a  less  depth  (for  I  think  any 
one  who  will  notice  the  drift  of  our  literature,  and 
talk  upon  such  subjects  with  the  men  he  meets,  will 
see  that  it  is  sub-soil  and  not  surface  plowing  that 
materialistic  ideas  are  now  doing),  such  a  state  of 
thought  preceded  the  French  revolution.  But  the 
closest  parallel  to  the  wreck  of  religious  ideas  now 
[106] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

going  on  is  to  be  found  in  that  period  in  which 
ancient  civilization  began  to  pass  from  splendor  to 
decline.  What  change  may  come,  no  mortal  man 
can  tell,  but  that  some  great  change  must  come, 
thoughtful  men  begin  to  feel.  The  civilized  world  is 
trembling  on  the  verge  of  a  great  movement.  Either 
it  must  be  a  leap  upward,  which  will  open  the  way  to 
advances  yet  undreamed  of,  or  it  must  be  a  plunge 
downward,  which  will  carry  us  back  toward  bar- 
barism. 


[107] 


V.    THE  CENTRAL  TRUTH 

w  •  ^HE  truth  which  is  clearly  apparent  in  the 
>  rise  and  fall  of  nations  and  the  growth  and 
JL  decay  of  civilizations  accords  with  those 
deep-seated  recognitions  of  relation  and  sequence 
that  we  denominate  moral  perceptions.  This  truth 
involves  both  a  menace  and  a  promise.  It  shows 
that  the  evils  arising  from  the  unjust  and  unequal 
distribution  of  wealth,  which  are  becoming  more 
and  more  apparent  as  modern  civilization  goes  on, 
are  not  incidents  of  progress,  but  tendencies  which 
must  bring  progress  to  a  halt;  that  they  will  not 
cure  themselves,  but,  on  the  contrary,  must,  unless 
their  cause  is  removed,  grow  greater  and  greater, 
until  they  sweep  us  back  into  barbarism  by  the  road 
every  previous  civilization  has  trod.  But  it  also 
shows  that  these  evils  are  not  imposed  by  natural 
laws;  that  they  spring  solely  from  social  maladjust- 
ments which  ignore  natural  laws,  and  that  in  re- 
moving their  cause  we  shall  be  giving  an  enormous 
impetus  to  progress. 

[108] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

The  poverty  which  in  the  midst  of  abundance 
pinches  and  imbrutes  men,  and  all  the  manifold  evils 
which  flow  from  it,  spring  from  a  denial  of  justice. 
In  permitting  the  monopolization  of  the  oppor- 
tunities which  nature  freely  offers  to  all,  we  have 
ignored  the  fundamental  law  of  justice — for,  so  far 
as  we  can  see,  when  we  view  things  upon  a  large 
scale,  justice  seems  to  be  the  supreme  law  of  the 
universe.  But  by  sweeping  away  this  injustice  and 
asserting  the  rights  of  all  men  to  natural  oppor- 
tunities, we  shall  conform  ourselves  to  the  law — 
we  shall  remove  the  great  cause  of  unnatural  in- 
equality in  the  distribution  of  wealth  and  power; 
we  shall  abolish  poverty;  tame  the  ruthless  passions 
of  greed;,  dry  up  the  springs  of  vice  and  misery; 
light  in  dark  places  the  lamp  of  knowledge;  give 
new  vigor  to  invention  and  a  fresh  impulse  to  dis- 
covery; substitute  political  strength  for  political 
weakness;  and  make  tyranny  and  anarchy  im- 
possible. 

-'The  reform  I  have  proposed  accords  with  all  that 
is  politically,  socially,  or  morally  desirable.  It  has 
the  qualities  of  a  true  reform,  for  it  will  make  all 
other  reforms  easier.  What  is  it  but  the  carrying 
out  in  letter  and  spirit  of  the  truth  enunciated  in 
[109] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

the  Declaration  of  Independence — the  "self-evident" 
truth  that  is  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  Declaration — 
"That  all  men  are  created  equal;  that  they  are  endowed 
by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable  rights;  that 
among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness!" 

These  rights  are  denied  when  the  equal  right  to 
land — on  which  and  by  which  men  alone  can  live — 
is  denied.  Equality  of  political  rights  will  not  com- 
pensate for  the  denial  of  the  equal  right  to  the 
bounty  of  nature.  Political  liberty,  when  the  equal 
right  to  land  is  denied,  becomes,  as  population  in- 
creases and  invention  goes  on,  merely  the  liberty 
to  compete  for  employment  at  starvation  wages. 
This  is  the  truth  that  we  have  ignored.  And  so  there 
come  beggars  in  our  streets  and  tramps  on  our 
roads;  and  poverty  enslaves  men  who  we  boast 
are  political  sovereigns;  and  want  breeds  ignorance 
that  our  schools  cannot  enlighten;  and  citizens  vote 
as  their  masters  dictate;  and  the  demagogue  usurps 
the  part  of  the  statesman;  and  gold  weighs  in  the 
scales  of  justice;  and  in  high  places  sit  those  who  do 
not  pay  to  civic  virtue  even  the  compliment  of  hypoc- 
risy; and  the  pillars  of  the  republic  that  we  thought 
so  strong  already  bend  under  an  increasing  strain. 
[110] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

We  honor  Liberty  in  name  and  in  form.  We  set 
up  her  statues  and  sound  her  praises.  But  we  have 
not  fully  trusted  her.  And  with  our  growth  so  grow 
her  demands.  She  will  have  no  half  service! 

Liberty!  it  is  a  word  to  conjure  with,  not  to  vex 
the  ear  in  empty  boastings.  For  Liberty  means 
Justice,  and  Justice  is  the  natural  law — the  law 
of  health  and  symmetry  and  strength,  of  fraternity 
and  co-operation. 

They  who  look  upon  Liberty  as  having  accom- 
plished her  mission  when  she  has  abolished  hereditary 
privileges  and  given  men  the  ballot,  who  think  of 
her  as  having  no  further  relations  to  the  everyday 
affairs  of  life,  have  not  seen  her  real  grandeur — to 
them  the  poets  who  have  sung  of  her  must  seem 
rhapsodists,  and  her  martyrs  fools!  As  the  sun  is 
the  lord  of  life,  as  well  as  of  light;  as  his  beams  not 
merely  pierce  the  clouds,  but  support  all  growth, 
supply  all  motion,  and  call  forth  from  what  would 
otherwise  be  a  cold  and  inert  mass  all  the  infinite 
diversities  of  being  and  beauty,  so  is  liberty  to 
mankind.  It  is  not  for  an  abstraction  that  men 
have  toiled  and  died;  that  in  every  age  the  witnesses 
of  Liberty  have  stood  forth,  and  the  martyrs  of 
Liberty  have  suffered. 

[Ill] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

We  speak  of  Liberty  as  one  thing,  and  of  virtue, 
wealth,  knowledge,  invention,  national  strength 
and  national  independence  as  other  things.  But,  of 
all  these,  Liberty  is  the  source,  the  mother,  the  neces- 
sary condition.  She  is  to  virtue  what  light  is  to 
color;  to  wealth  what  sunshine  is  to  grain;  to 
knowledge  what  eyes  are  to  sight.  She  is  the  genius 
of  invention,  the  brawn  of  national  strength,  the 
spirit  of  national  independence.  Where  Liberty 
rises,  there  virtue  grows,  wealth  increases,  knowl- 
edge expands,  invention  multiplies  human  powers, 
and  in  strength  and  spirit  the  freer  nation  rises 
among  her  neighbors  as  Saul  amid  his  brethren — 
taller  and  fairer.  Where  Liberty  sinks,  there  virtue 
fades,  wealth  diminishes,  knowledge  is  forgotten, 
invention  ceases,  and  empires  once  mighty  in  arms 
and  arts  become  a  helpless  prey  to  freer  barbarians! 

Only  in  broken  gleams  and  partial  light  has  the 
sun  of  Liberty  yet  beamed  among  men,  but  all  prog- 
ress hath  she  called  forth. 

Liberty  came  to  a  race  of  slaves  crouching  under 
Egyptian  whips,  and  led  them  forth  from  the  House 
of  Bondage.  She  hardened  them  in  the  desert  and 
made  of  them  a  race  of  conquerors.  The  free  spirit 
of  the  Mosaic  law  took  their  thinkers  up  to  heights 
[112] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

•where  they  beheld  the  unity  of  God  and  inspired 
their  poets  with  strains  that  yet  phrase  the  highest 
exaltations  of  thought.  Liberty  dawned  on  the 
Phenician  coast,  and  ships  passed  the  Pillars  of 
Hercules  to  plow  the  unknown  sea.  She  shed  a 
partial  light  on  Greece,  and  marble  grew  to  shapes  of 
ideal  beauty,  words  became  the  instruments  of  sub- 
tlest thought,  and  against  the  scanty  militia  of  free 
cities  the  countless  hosts  of  the  Great  King  broke 
like  surges  against  a  rock.  She  cast  her  beam  on 
the  four-acre  farms  of  Italian  husbandmen,  and  born 
of  her  strength  a  power  came  forth  that  conquered 
the  world.  They  glinted  from  shields  of  German 
warriors,  and  Augustus  wept  his  legions.  Out  of 
the  night  that  followed  her  eclipse,  her  slanting  rays 
fell  again  on  free  cities,  and  a  lost  learning  revived, 
modern  civilization  began,  a  new  world  was  un- 
veiled; and  as  Liberty  grew,  so  grew  art,  wealth, 
power,  knowledge,  and  refinement.  In  the  history 
of  every  nation  we  may  read  the  same  truth.  It 
was  the  strength  born  of  Magna  Charta  that  won 
Crecy  and  Agincourt.  It  was  the  revival  of  Liberty 
from  the  despotism  of  the  Tudors  that  glorified  the 
Elizabethan  age.  It  was  the  spirit  that  brought  a 
crowned  tyrant  to  the  block  that  planted  here  the 
[113] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

seed  of  a  mighty  tree.  It  was  the  energy  of  ancient 
freedom  that,  the  moment  it  had  gained  unity, 
made  Spam  the  mightiest  power  of  the  world,  only 
to  fall  to  the  lowest  depth  of  weakness  when  tyranny 
succeeded  liberty.  See,  in  France,  all  intellectual 
vigor  dying  under  the  tyranny  of  the  Seventeenth 
Century  to  revive  in  splendor  as  Liberty  awoke  in 
the  Eighteenth,  and  on  the  enfranchisement  of 
French  peasants  in  the  Great  Revolution,  basing  the 
wonderful  strength  that  has  in  our  time  defied  defeat. 

Shall  we  not  trust  her? 

In  our  time,  as  in  times  before,  creep  on  the  insidi- 
ous forces  that,  producing  inequality,  destroy  Lib- 
erty. On  the  horizon  the  clouds  begin  to  lower.  Lib- 
erty calls  to  us  again.  We  must  follow  her  further; 
we  must  trust  her  fully.  Either  we  must  wholly 
accept  her  or  she  will  not  stay.  It  is  not  enough  that 
men  should  vote;  it  is  not  enough  that  they  should 
be  theoretically  equal  before  the  law.  They  must 
have  liberty  to  avail  themselves  of  the  opportunities 
and  means  of  life;  they  must  stand  on  equal  terms 
with  reference  to  the  bounty  of  nature.  Either  this, 
or  Liberty  withdraws  her  light !  Either  this,  or  dark- 
ness comes  on,  and  the  very  forces  that  progress  has 
evolved  turn  to  powers  that  work  destruction.  This 
[114] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

is  the  universal  law.  This  is  the  lesson  of  the  cen- 
turies. Unless  its  foundations  be  laid  in  justice,  the 
social  structure  cannot  stand. 

Our  primary  social  adjustment  is  a  denial  of  jus- 
tice. In  allowing  one  man  to  own  the  land  on  which 
and  from  which  other  men  must  live,  we  have  made 

them  his  bondsmen  in  a  degree  which  increases  as 

^/ 
material   progress   goes   on.      This   is    the   subtile 

alchemy  that  in  ways  they  do  not  realize  is  extract- 
ing from  the  masses  in  every  civilized  country  the 
fruits  of  their  weary  toil;  that  is  instituting  a  harder 
and  more  hopeless  slavery  in  place  of  that  which 
has  been  destroyed;  that  is  bringing  political  despo- 
tism out  of  political  freedom,  and  must  soon  trans- 
mute democratic  institutions  into  anarchy. 

It  is  this  that  turns  the  blessings  of  material 
progress  into  a  curse.  It  is  this  that  crowds  human 
beings  into  noisome  cellars  and  squalid  tenement 
houses;  that  fills  prisons  and  brothels;  that  goads 
men  with  want  and  consumes  them  with  greed; 
that  robs  women  of  the  grace  and  beauty  of  perfect 
womanhood;  that  takes  from  little  children  the  joy 
and  innocence  of  life's  morning. 

Civilization  so  based  cannot  continue.  The 
eternal  laws  of  the  universe  forbid  it.  Ruins  of  dead 
[1151 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

empires  testify,  and  the  witness  that  is  in  every  soul 
answers,  that  it  cannot  be.  It  is  something  grander 
than  Benevolence,  something  more  august  than 
Charity — it  is  Justice  herself  that  demands  of  us  to 
right  this  wrong.  Justice  that  will  not  be  denied; 
that  cannot  be  put  off — Justice  that  with  the 
scales  carries  the  sword.  Shall  we  ward  the 
stroke  with  liturgies  and  prayers?  Shall  we  avert 
the  decrees  of  immutable  law  by  raising  churches 
when  hungry  infants  moan  and  weary  mothers 
weep? 

Though  it  may  take  the  language  of  prayer,  it  is 
blasphemy  that  attributes  to  the  inscrutable  decrees 
of  Providence  the  suffering  and  brutishness  that 
come  of  poverty;  that  turns  with  folded  hands  to  the 
All-Father  and  lays  on  Him  the  responsibility  for 
the  want  and  crime  of  our  great  cities.  We  degrade 
the  Everlasting.  We  slander  the  Just  One.  A 
merciful  man  would  have  better  ordered  the  world; 
a  just  man  would  crush  with  his  foot  such  an  ulcerous 
anthill!  It  is  not  the  Almighty,  but  we  who  are 
responsible  for  the  vice  and  misery  that  fester  amid 
our  civilization.  The  Creator  showers  upon  us  his 
gifts — more  than  enough  for  all.  But  like  swine 
scrambling  for  food,  we  tread  them  in  the  mire — 
[116] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

tread  them  in  the  mire,  while  we  tear  and  rend  each 
other! 

vln  the  very  centers  of  our  civilization  to-day  are 
want  and  suffering  enough  to  make  sick  at  heart 
whoever  does  not  close  his  eyes  and  steel  his  nerves. 
Dare  we  turn  to  the  Creator  and  ask  Him  to  relieve 
it?  Supposing  the  prayer  were  heard,  and  at  the 
behest  with  which  the  universe  sprang  into  being 
there  should  glow  in  the  sun  a  greater  power;  new 
virtue  fill  the  air;  fresh  vigor  the  soil;  that  for  every 
blade  of  grass  that  now  grows  two  should  spring  up, 
and  the  seed  that  now  increases  fifty-fold  should  in- 
crease a  hundred-fold!  Would  poverty  be  abated  or 
want  relieved?  Manifestly  no!  Whatever  benefit 
would  accrue  would  be  but  temporary.  The  new 
powers  streaming  through  the  material  universe 
could  be  utilized  only  through  land.  And  land, 
being  private  property,  the  classes  that  now  monopo- 
lize the  bounty  of  the  Creator  would  monopolize  all 
the  new  bounty.  Land  owners  would  alone  be 
benefited.  Rents  would  increase,  but  wages  would 
still  tend  to  the  starvation  point! 

This    is    not    merely    a    deduction    of    political 
economy;    it  is  a  fact  of  experience.     We  know  it 
because  we  have  seen  it.     Within  our  own  times, 
f  1171 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

under  our  very  eyes,  that  Power  which  is  above  all, 
and  in  all,  and  through  all;  that  Power  of  which  the 
whole  universe  is  but  the  manifestation;  that  Power 
which  maketh  all  things,  and  without  which  is  not 
anything  made  that  is  made,  has  increased  the 
bounty  which  men  may  enjoy,  as  truly  as  though  the 
fertility  of  nature  had  been  increased.  Into  the  mind 
of  one  came  the  thought  that  harnessed  steam  for 
the  service  of  mankind.  To  the  inner  ear  of  another 
was  whispered  the  secret  that  compels  the  lightning 
to  bear  a  message  round  the  globe.  In  every  direc- 
tion have  the  laws  of  matter  been  revealed;  in  every 
department  of  industry  have  arisen  arms  of  iron  and 
fingers  of  steel,  whose  effect  upon  the  production  of 
wealth  has  been  precisely  the  same  as  an  increase  in 
the  fertility  of  nature.  What  has  been  the  result? 
Simply  that  land  owners  get  all  the  gain.  The  won- 
derful discoveries  and  inventions  of  our  century 
have  neither  increased  wages  nor  lightened  toil. 
The  effect  has  simply  been  to  make  the  few  richer; 
the  many  more  helpless! 

Can  it  be  that  the  gifts  of  the  Creator  may  be  thus 

misappropriated  with  impunity?    Is  it  a  light  thing 

that  labor  should  be  robbed  of  its  earnings  while 

greed  *olls  in  wealth — that  the  many  should  want 

[118] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

while  the  few  are  surfeited?  Turn  to  history,  and  on 
every  page  may  be  read  the  lesson  that  such  wrong 
never  goes  unpunished;  that  the  Nemesis  that  fol- 
lows injustice  never  falters  nor  sleeps!  Look  around 
to-day.  Can  this  state  of  things  continue?  May  we 
even  say,  "After  us  the  deluge!"  Nay;  the  pillars 
of  the  state  are  trembling  even  now,  and  the  very 
foundations  of  society  begin  to  quiver  with  pent-up 
forces  that  glow  underneath.  The  struggle  that 
must  either  revivify,  or  convulse  in  ruin,  is  near  at 
hand,  if  it  be  not  already  begun. 

The  fiat  has  gone  forth!  With  steam  and  elec- 
tricity, and  the  new  powers  born  of  progress,  forces 
have  entered  the  world  that  will  either  compel  us  to 
a  higher  plane  or  overwhelm  us,  as  nation  after 
nation,  as  civilization  after  civilization,  have  been 
overwhelmed  before.  It  is  the  delusion  which  pre- 
cedes destruction  that  sees  in  the  popular  unrest 
with  which  the  civilized  world  is  feverishly  pulsing 
only  the  passing  effect  of  ephemeral  causes.  Between 
democratic  ideas  and  the  aristocratic  adjustments 
of  society  there  is  an  irreconcilable  conflict.  Here 
in  the  United  States,  as  there  in  Europe,  it  may  be 
seen  arising.  We  cannot  go  on  permitting  men  to 
vote  and  forcing  them  to  tramp.  We  cannot  go  on 
[119] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

educating  boys  and  girls  in  our  public  schools  and 
then  refusing  them  the  right  to  earn  an  honest  liv- 
ing. We  cannot  go  on  prating  of  the  inalienable 
rights  of  man  and  then  denying  the  inalienable  right 
to  the  bounty  of  the  Creator.  Even  now,  in  old 
bottles  the  new  wine  begins  to  ferment,  and  elemental 
forces  gather  for  the  strife! 

But  if,  while  there  is  yet  time,  we  turn  to  Justice 
and  obey  her,  if  we  trust  Liberty  and  follow  her,  the 
dangers  that  now  threaten  must  disappear,  the 
forces  that  now  menace  will  turn  to  agencies  of  eleva- 
tion. Think  of  the  powers  now  wasted;  of  the  in- 
finite fields  of  knowledge  yet  to  be  explored;  of  the 
possibilities  of  which  the  wondrous  inventions  of 
this  century  give  us  but  a  hint.  With  want  de- 
stroyed; with  greed  changed  to  noble  passions; 
with  the  fraternity  that  is  born  of  equality  taking 
the  place  of  the  jealousy  and  fear  that  now  array 
men  against  each  other;  with  mental  power  loosed 
by  conditions  that  give  to  the  humblest  comfort 
and  leisure;  and  who  shall  measure  the  heights  to 
which  our  civilization  may  soar?  Words  fail  the 
thought!  It  is  the  Golden  Age  of  which  poets  have 
sung  and  high-raised  seers  have  told  in  metaphor! 
It  is  the  glorious  vision  which  has  always  haunted 
[  120] 


THE  LAW  OF  HUMAN  PROGRESS 

man  with  gleams  of  fitful  splendor.  It  is  what  he  saw 
whose  eyes  at  Patmos  were  closed  in  a  trance.  It  is 
the  culmination  of  Christianity — the  City  of  God  on 
earth,  with  its  walls  of  jasper  and  its  gates  of  pearl! 
It  is  the  reign  of  the  Prince  of  Peace! 


[121 


This  monograph  comprises  the  five  chapters  of  Book 
X  of  "Progress  and  Poverty."  A  few  verbal  changes 
made  by  Louis  F.  Post  at  the  request  of  the  family  of 
Henry  George,  have  given  it  completeness  in  itself 
without  otherwise  altering  the  original  text.  "Progress 
and  Poverty"  may  be  purchased  at  any  well-stocked 
bookstore  in  either  cloth-bound  or  leather-bound  editions, 
or  in  the  10-volume  set  of  Henry  George's  complete 
works.  It  may  be  found  also  in  any  public  library. 


[122] 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 
o  Q   A^3* 


|\PR7 
1  f 


V  15  195| 
13  1957 


•*• 


Form  L-9-15m-7,'31 


2  9  V^' 

•IAD  9  ^ 

WAK  »  **  ^ 
ii  H    23   1^34 

JUL. 

5  1935  3  0 

1     1935 

OHM.' JAN 

otc  i  ^ iun 

NOV  1 4  1935        n<ro  ID-URI 

M*    MAR1819W 

«A^TI  ^h   _^.^h^% 

30 


x 
RE 


RENEWAL 

LD  URL      rr^p      8 1Q7t 

tfi  1  5  75/5 


